On October 22, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul, and has not been seen or heard from since then. It is thought that he was murdered inside the embassy and his body was discretely removed. He was a writer for The Washington post and has openly criticized the royal Saudi family for decades, also being A former editor in- chief for a Saudi newspaper. He entered the embassy to obtain papers and documents and to meet with the ambassador.
As of today Turkish officials have confirmed that he was brutally murdered as soon as he entered the embassy. He was attacked immediately upon entering the embassy, he was brutally tortured, including having his fingers cut off, then he was beheaded and dismembered. The Saudi embassy officials allegedly hired a forensics specialist to help instruct them how to clean up and carry out the murder with the littlest chance of being caught. This information came from an audio recording inside the embassy.
I am curious as to how The United States will respond to this issue as it was caused by Saudi Arabia. I think that it would be interesting to see the levels of analysis for this particular issue, and what caused the Saudi’s to approve this. I would think that being an ambassador, he would have seen the implications of murdering a well known public figure inside the walls of his embassy and the ease of which it could be traced to him. Also to me it is interesting as to how the Saudi’s denied the claims of his murder as a cover up or if they did not know about the plans to murder Khashoggi. President Trump threatened “severe punishment” if the Saudis were responsible, I am curious to see what he would do and how far he would go in terms of punishment and what that could do the United States and Middle Eastern relationships.