--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Early on in this episode, you're going to hear about some graphic violence. If that sort of thing is too much for you, skip ahead to about minute two after the theme music. Thanks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's supposedly audio from inside the Saudi consulate building, which proves that Khashoggi was interrogated, tortured, and murdered by this alleged Saudi hit squad that had been sent from Riyadh.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Khashoggi showed up for his appointment at 1pm on the day he disappeared. He was invited into the consul general's office, but while he was in there, he was basically assaulted by various members of this team.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Very difficult to verify this stuff, but the gist of it seems to be that he was beaten and tortured. His fingers might have been cut off before he was actually killed. He may have been drugged and then a forensics doctor who was part of this supposed hit squad then dismembered his body on a table in the Consul General's study.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Those body parts were removed from the consulate in diplomatic bags and driven from the consulate around the corner to the Consul General's house. All of the speculation is from what is probably a Turkish surveillance device planted in the Consul General's office.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Turks have been very wary about releasing this tape and the fact that they've been spying on a country that is a regional rival, but, they're allied on many issues. They say they've played this tape to their American counterparts, to American diplomats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As far as I can tell, anyone who's listened to it is pretty shaken by it. It's very gruesome and it'd be very hard to see how this is anything other than a premeditated murder from actually listening to this tape.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Turkey knows that if it releases this, then there's no way the Saudis can kind of backtrack on these consistent denials that they know anything that happened there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We told you the story of Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance last week. It looked like he was probably dead and that he died at the hands of the Saudi Arabian government. Since then, it's become all but certain.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The only thing missing is his body. But along with that certainty has come consequences. We're so used to seeing powerful men get away with just about everything in this world, but this time might be different.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, the U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin backed out of a big investor conference in Saudi Arabia. The U.K. and France are backing out too. No one wants to be near the crown prince of Saudi Arabia right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And some people think MBS, one of the most powerful autocrats in the world, might even have to step down.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Hi, I'm Bethan McKernan, and I've been covering the story and the consequences for The Guardian.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Turkish government is usually loathe to talk to journalists. It doesn't really leak anything. It treats local and international media alike with a lot of suspicion.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: But on this story, there's been a very controlled, very centralized sort of steady drip, drip, drip of information leaked to news outlets.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that kind of coordination is really unusual. But they're doing it because they're afraid of actually giving their version of events through official channels.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: The Turkish government is definitely driving this narrative, but they're doing it in a very specific way where nothing is actually attributable yet to any official.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's partly why there's so much, you know, international intrigue around this story.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: The last time we checked in, the story was still sort of developing. We had heard that the Turkish government said that Jamal was brutally murdered in the Saudi consulate, but we hadn't heard much from the Saudis other than, you know, a sort of blanket denial.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can you take us through what's happened in the past week or so and how this story has developed?
--:-- Bethan McKernan: The big kind of development in the investigation came when the Saudis agreed to let Turkish investigators search both the consulate, which is where Khashoggi was allegedly murdered, and the consul general's house, which is around the corner, and is where allegedly his body was taken and disposed of.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A search went ahead on Monday of the consulate. This is something the Turks have been asking for from the very beginning. Initially, the Saudis said that they were okay with it. Then they appeared to change their mind.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: It took nine hours. The forensic team didn't come out until the early hours of the morning. Erdogan himself said that some surfaces inside the building had been freshly painted and that toxic substances were discovered by the investigations team and are being now looked at.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The key unanswered question that we're looking at is if Khashoggi was murdered, where is his body? Investigators are looking at the garage under the Saudi Consul General's house.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Because that's where several diplomatic cars spent several hours, in the hours after Khashoggi disappeared, after they allegedly drove his body there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Turkish investigators were allowed into the consul general's house for the first time on Wednesday night.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: A caravan of Turkish forensics teams descended on the Saudi consul's residence today, gloves and hazmat suits on, ready to conduct their first search of the property since Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance more than two weeks ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That investigation is going to be ongoing. There's probably going to be more than one search, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't emerge from that initial search with smoking gun kind of evidence that Khashoggi's body had been disposed of there.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: The question is what they do with that information and when they choose to release it, and so far we've seen they've been very careful to control that drip feed of information.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Saudi Arabia could make this whole scandal go away instantly if they could just produce evidence that Khashoggi left the consulate, whether there was a video of that from CCTV or whether he was spotted somewhere else.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: But it's been 15 days now and they've not been able to do that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the Turkish government says that they have this video and it seems likely that they bugged the Saudi consulate.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Are they going to face repercussions for spying on Saudi Arabia this whole time? They claim to have evidence, but they don't say where the evidence is from, which is where you get this theory about Khashoggi's Apple Watch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Investigators were trying to work out whether an Apple Watch that Jamal Khashoggi may have been wearing when he walked into the Saudi consulate here might have been able to transmit some valuable information to an iPhone in the possession of his fiancée, who, of course, was standing outside the consulate waiting for him to return.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Most tech experts think that that isn't possible. The watch was too far away from the phone for those devices to sync, which kind of leaves this one explanation that all the details that we're hearing are coming from this audio device that was planted in the consul general's office by the Turks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So then where does that leave the Turkish government? It's a difficult position for the Turks.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: If they release this evidence, they're basically admitting that they were spying on the Saudi diplomatic mission in Istanbul.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But the fallout from that is definitely much bigger for the Saudis, who are going to be faced with proof in the public domain that a man, that a citizen was murdered within their consulate when he had an appointment to pick up papers he needed to get married.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: I mean, that's unprecedented.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ankara is not backing down on this and is pushing the Saudis to provide evidence, which suggests that maybe any kind of deals that were being struck or understandings that were being reached behind the scenes maybe fell through.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: President Trump might have had something to do with that when he gave that interview saying that maybe rogue killers were to blame for what happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But even if that was the line that Ankara and Washington and Riyadh had agreed to go with, Trump kind of jumped the gun a bit by, he almost said it too early because it embarrassed Erdogan that his investigators would look like they hadn't done their jobs properly.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: I mean, at that time, they were still searching the consulate building. It felt, I think, to Erdogan like he was losing control of that narrative.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he sort of pushed it back again.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Who does the Turkish government think is behind this? There was this thing about this 15-person hit squad. Is that still the theory?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if so, have any of those members of this supposed hit squad been identified?
--:-- Bethan McKernan: All 15 of them were captured on CCTV in Istanbul's airport. They were identified by the Turkish media.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At least three or four of them are thought to be members of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, members of his personal security detail.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: According to a source, Turkish authorities are now investigating Maher Abdelaziz Mutrib, a member of the elite protection brigade tasked with guarding the Saudi crown prince.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The forensics doctor Mohamed El-Tabaigi is very high-ranking within Saudi establishment circles. He holds a position within the interior ministry.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: These are people who are definitely a part of the Saudi elite. These guys have also been ID'd by Saudi media as wrongly accused tourists who just happen to be visiting, arriving on private jets and leaving on private jets.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Those travelers were in Turkey as regular tourists, but were accused of being related to Khashoggi's disappearance with no sufficient evidence.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Which is clearly bullshit given that flight logs showed that most of the men arrived on a private charter plane at 3 and that all of them departed the same day they arrived.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The circle tightening right The Turks have this evidence. The Saudis know that Turks have this evidence.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: And if they don't offer somebody up as the fall guy or as the scapegoat, people want answers and the Turks are tightening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, they're very much upping the ante and they're very much continuing to pile on that pressure to get the Saudis to actually say something about what happened in the consulate that day.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Given all of this, why do we think the Saudis are now cooperating with the Turkish government?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Saudis had this kind of two-week interim period where apparently surfaces were painted over in the consulate before the Turks were allowed in.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Cleaners were actually seen entering the consulate building a couple of hours before investigators were let in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, I'm not saying that the cleaners were allowed back in to spray some disinfectant and mop the floors and they got rid of all the evidence of an international kind of crime scene.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: But it's not a good look.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Coming up, the consequences. This is Today Explained.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: It looks really bad. It's an unprecedented situation. I mean, Saudi Arabia has carried out renditions of dissident princes from a couple of different countries before in the last sort of decade or so.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In a sense, you know, this is business as usual for them. The issue is that they got caught.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: France and the UK and the G7 as a group have all sort of issued statements that they're very worried about Khashoggi's disappearance.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The US on the other hand appears to be quite reassured by these promises from Riyadh that they're going to conduct a thorough investigation and they're really going to get to the bottom of what happened.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: It's almost like other parts of the US and other industries are kind of taking more of a lead on showing their displeasure in this case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, there's this international investment conference in Riyadh next week. Some people are calling the Davos of the desert, which the House of Saud really needs to go well.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: The Saudis have been courting a lot of American industries, particularly Silicon Valley and the entertainment industry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Basically since Mohammed bin Salman became crown prince. There's been jitters about how he has handled himself as crown prince so far.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: There have been signs that his behavior is impulsive and erratic and quite dangerous. And each incident seems to have, you know, been slightly worse than the last.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Last year, he kidnapped the prime minister of Lebanon for two weeks, Saad Hariri. It was a really big deal.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: And the markets sort of freaked out then that maybe this guy isn't the reformer that he promised to be.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They did it again when he arrested, I think it was over 200 people who were very well connected and wealthy within the kingdom.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: He locked them all up in the Ritz Carlton last November. And investors were sort of becoming wary about whether this is a crown prince that they want to place their bets on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this investment conference next week, lots of prominent business world figures have pulled out.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Christine Lagarde from the IMF, Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan Chase, Danny Minton-Beddoes, who's the editor of The Economist, sponsors are pulling out left, right and center.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Even the CEO of Uber, which is a company that has a lot of significant Saudi investment in it, has said that he's not going.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: And while business leaders and governments are pulling out of this investment conference, including Steven Mnuchin, the president's still backing his boy, MBS?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump was really slow to respond on this. He spent the first few days of this crisis not really saying anything at all.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Then he came out and said that he thought the case was shocking and horrendous and there needed to be severe consequences and punishments for anybody who was found to have disappeared or killed Khashoggi.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then he spoke to King Salman. He was basically parroting what King Salman told him, which was that rogue killers could have been behind this alleged murder.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: And when Mike Pompeo was in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Trump was patched into a phone call with Mohammed bin Salman that evening and promptly, you know, tweeted right after he got off the phone that Saudi Arabia, you know, had again strenuously denied these allegations and he even made a comparison to Brett Kavanaugh.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Saying that this was another rush to judgment, another case of someone or someone being deemed guilty before being proven innocent.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: It's really a remarkable comparison for the president to take.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How often does a murderer confess when someone just says, hey, did you murder that person?
--:-- Bethan McKernan: And yeah, Mohammed bin Salman said, no, no, we didn't murder that person. And Trump has basically gone, oh, okay, I believe you. Cool.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's sort of the end of it.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: How out of step is President Trump with the rest of the world at this point? Very.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, that's no surprise to anyone, I think, who's watched his relationships with other kind of strongmen around the world since he became president, right?
--:-- Bethan McKernan: I mean, Putin said the same thing earlier this year. Trump asked him, did you meddle in the 2016 election? And Putin said, no, we didn't. And then Trump went, see, they didn't meddle in the 2016 election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has a real affinity for people he perceives as strong leaders. And Mohammed bin Salman, he's definitely a strong leader.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: He's the de facto ruler of an absolute monarchy. You can't help but suspect this goes deeper than Trump's admiration for strongmen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How deep does the Saudi money relationship with the United States go?
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Oh, I mean, it's decades and decades old. Those ties mostly because of oil go back a very long way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Saudi spends annually billions in property investments.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: It's the single biggest source of funding for Silicon Valley now, which is astonishing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's also a lot of cultural programs and universities that take Saudi money.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: It's a really uncomfortable position for anyone, you know, any U.S. institution that has Saudi money, and there's a lot of them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Saudi Arabia has always had a very patchy human rights record. It's been waging the war in Yemen for the last three and a half years.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: People were willing to take that money then. If their consciences are sort of coming back to haunt them now, then I think that was written on the wall a while ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Apparently thousands of civilian deaths have not been enough to sway politicians in the U.S. that you shouldn't be selling arms to the Saudis.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: So if the death of one journalist suddenly became the catalyst for that, I'd be really surprised.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How involved is Trump's own business here? Are there personal Trump business decisions on the line here?
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Well, Trump tweeted that he doesn't have any investments in Saudi Arabia. And as far as we know, that's true.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's also true that the Saudis have given him a lot of money over the years.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: They own the 45th floor of Trump Tower. They've bought various other real estate projects from Trump over the years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he boasted about it during his election campaign.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: You know, he said, I'm friends with the Saudis. They give me a lot of money. You know, what am I supposed to do? Not like them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump has done personal business deals with the Saudis, but there is a real argument there that if you were to alienate or cut off the Saudis over this affair, you'd be endangering a lot of other efforts that Trump really needs Saudi Arabia to make work.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: If the Saudis aren't behind the peace plan for Israel and maybe a state of Palestine, then they're in trouble.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, they'd be the main sponsors of anything like that.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: They need Saudi Arabia to counter Iran's influence in the region.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They need Saudi Arabian money to stabilize parts of Syria that the two kind of have the same interest in.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: These relationships are quite old and they're deep and they involve vast, vast amounts of money.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If Trump faces pressure, if he has to do something about this, get his hands dirty, what's going to happen to the crown prince?
--:-- Bethan McKernan: Will MBS go down? One option is that Mohammed bin Salman himself could take the fall over this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has a lot of internal enemies, especially in the branches of the royal family that he kind of sidelined in his quest to kind of consolidate his position.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: They would happily clamor for his removal as the next in line to the throne if it became clear that that was what the international community was demanding.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, if this could actually remove Mohammed bin Salman from the position of crown prince, that would be absolutely huge.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: King Salman has many other sons, many other brothers who would willingly take his place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what Trump does in the next couple of days regarding his allies is really quite crucially important, I think.
--:-- Bethan McKernan: But as with everything with his presidency so far, it's quite unpredictable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bethan McKernan covers the Middle East for The Guardian.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained.
