NBC News reports: “Friends of the missing Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi described him as being deeply afraid of his country’s rulers and of being targeted by the powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the months before his disappearance.”
See from the British Independent: “Jamal Khashoggi joins growing list of Saudi dissidents who have mysteriously disappeared in recent years.” The New Arab report from Monday: “Lebanon lawmaker Paula Yacoubian confirms Riyadh detained PM Hariri amid journalist disappearance mystery.”
MEDEA BENJAMIN, medea at codepink.org, @medeabenjamin
Benjamin is co-founder of the activist group CodePink, which is organizing protests on Wednesday at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C. at noon and at the Saudi consulate in New York City at 5 p.m.
CodePink said in a statement: “The last anyone has heard from prominent Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was October 2, when he walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to get some papers needed for his marriage. Turkish investigators have leaked what they believe happened: A 15-person hit team was sent from Saudi Arabia to Turkey to murder Khashoggi, who had been a critic of the Saudi government.”
Benjamin is author of Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection. On Monday, she appeared on “Democracy Now!“: “I think it has to be put in the context that the Saudi crown prince, MBS [Mohammed bin Salman], is out of control — what he is doing in Yemen, the bombing of schoolchildren, the kidnapping of Hariri in Lebanon, the throwing in prison of women activists, of scholars, and creating an economic war with Qatar.”
The New York Times reported in August: “U.N. Says Saudi-led Airstrike Killed at Least 22 Yemeni Children.”