The Saudi Arabian tyrant silencing his critics with savagery | 60 Minutes Australia

he might be wealthy beyond belief and lead a life of extreme privilege but in reality the crown prince of saudi arabia muhammad bin salman is a ruthless thug who places no value on the lives of those who question him now ordinarily uttering an insult like that would be enough to cause an international incident but it's exactly what the cia found following a top secret investigation into the death of jamal khashoggi the recently declassified report is damning saying the outspoken journalist was assassinated and his body dismembered at the saudi consulate in istanbul in an operation ordered by bin salman it's savagery that's stunned the world you're watching the last moments of jamal khashoggi's life entering the saudi consulate in istanbul arriving the room at 1 15 by 1 35 he was already dead so it all happened so quickly and his life was taken so fast laying in weight inside was a saudi hit squad they don't know it but the building has been bugged by intelligence agencies the brutal murder caught on tape is it possible to put the body in a bag no too heavy very tall i know how to cut very well i have never worked on a warm body though but i'll also manage that easily i normally put on my headphones and listen to music i sleep on my coffee and smoke the methodology of the murder is is almost medieval yeah people would say saudi arabia is still a medieval place after years denying involvement did you order the murder of jamal khashoggi absolutely not now explosive secret documents point the finger of blame directly at a friend of australia saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman there is no way an operation of this nature could be conducted without the crown prince being informed involved and indeed commissioning the operation this is jamal khashoggi welcome to the program jamal khashoggi was a respected journalist and said what many were too scared to say about saudi arabia's powerful crown prince muhammad bin salman also known as mbs he is creating an environment of uh of of of intimidation and and fear surroundings are being silenced critics of saudi arabia's regime are not tolerated so khashoggi fled to the us in 2017 where he continued to write critical articles in the washington post that drew the eye of saudi arabia's de facto ruler it made khashoggi a marked man jamal was a gamekeeper turned poacher journalist jonathan rugman has written a book investigating khashoggi's demise and here is this irritating saudi figure in the heart of american power writing these columns in the washington post criticizing what is going on in saudi arabia and the crown prince is extremely thin skinned he simply couldn't cope with the criticism despite the threat jamal felt safe in the ancient city of istanbul on the banks of the bosphorus he'd even found love here with adichia chenges who he was about to marry jamal was going to be your husband what did you love about him we both felt we understood each other really well jamal had given me the feelings of peace and happiness october 2 2018 jamal had an appointment with the saudi consulate in istanbul to pick up a document for his wedding to fiance hadicha she went with him on the day and is seen waiting once he goes inside it's quite haunting to look back now at those pictures of you waiting outside the consulate can you just take us through what was going through your mind then as the hours went by and still jamal hadn't emerged the only thing i remember about that day is that i was really waiting there with big hopes nobody waits somewhere thinking that something bad is going to happen to them what the couple didn't know was a group of assassins had been dispatched from saudi arabia to meet jamal including a forensic pathologist skilled in dismembering corpses an hour before jamal enters the consulate there is a recording a chilling recording agnes calamard is the united nations special rapporteur investigating the journalists execution is it possible to put the body in a bag no too heavy this is a translation of the tapes she's listened to from inside the consulate capturing a conversation between a forensic pathologist and the head of the operation after i dismember it you will wrap the parts into plastic bags put them in such cases and take them out that saudi forensic pathologist actually studied right here in australia for three months at the victorian institute for forensic medicine the doctor is explaining that he you know is not used to cut bodies on the floor that if they cut the body into several smaller pieces then it can go into some of the of the bags that cutting skin may be a bit more difficult all of that conversation is heard before jamal khashoggi enters the consulate and then that conversation ends asking whether the sacrificial animal has arrived so they called jamal a sacrificial animal yeah the death squad was about to carry out its orders under the portrait of crown prince muhammad bin salman this met by individuals who have tools to kill him they have injections they probably have a saw they have ropes they have everything that they needed to kill him and to dismember him there is a towel here will you have me drugged we will put you to sleep and yet what is so striking jamal come across as somebody so gentle so polite even when confronted by those killers those bullies he tries to negotiate with them he tries to speak to them however progressively you can hear in his voice the fears coming up and the concerns that maybe it is not going to be so easy to get out of of this surface what happened next is brutal and barbaric the last minute or so of the recording when what we hear are the sound of the struggle the sounds of people pushing people um breathing very heavily you know push his head push him there easier sleep yet um keep your hands there keep your hand there and then just just the noise of the plastic so the body is dismembered very quickly after the killing indicating that everything was planned jamal had disappeared without a trace with his fiancee haditha waiting outside the consulate until the early hours of the morning what was the moment of realization for you that something terrible had happened to jamal my first serious fear was when i called the consulate and obtained the information that the consulate had closed that's when i truly thought about the possibility that something bad may have happened to him but i still didn't think it would be something this bad like being killed or being dissected initially the saudis refused to acknowledge that jamal was dead even dressing a member of the kill squad in his clothing and getting him to walk past cctv cameras in istanbul to put investigators off the scent turkish police weren't allowed inside the consulate until two weeks later was this a cover-up from the outset from the saudis yes i think it was a cover-up from the outset jonathan you've written and researched a book british journalist jonathan rugman has covered the story since it first broke the saudi version of events which kept changing first they said he had gone outside then they said something had happened to him in a fight then they said that there'd been a struggle and he had been killed by accident the narrative that saudis kept coming up with was was unconvincing not least because the killers arrived in two planes with diplomatic clearance seven of the 15 members of the hit squad were from the crown prince's personal security detail the plane's ownership was in the hands of the saudi sovereign wealth fund controlled by the saudi crown prince so the idea that this was an unauthorized operation was complete nonsense jamal's murder drew intense interest and speculation but the saudi palace continued to deny any involvement despite mounting evidence to the contrary so clearly this is a premeditated crime i think i think the evidence is there that the intention was to kill him but there was still nothing definitive linking the crown prince to the killing that was until this year saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman is a serious power broker on the world stage seen here smiling with our prime minister at the g20 summit in 2019 a year after the murder of saudi journalist jamal khashoggi a few months later aware he was the center of a growing international scandal the prince agreed to an interview on us 60 minutes did you order the murder of jamal khashoggi absolutely not the american government thinks that you ordered it what did you think uh i believe what you mentioned is not correct there isn't an official statement announced by the american government in this regard crown prince had formed a close relationship with president trump who viewed him as an essential ally in the middle east and an asset to the u.s economy three billion dollars 533 million dollars it was a relationship that was simply too valuable to jeopardize we've become very good friends over a fairly short period of time united nations investigator agnes kalamat says muhammad bin salman was untouchable as long as president trump was in office well it certainly protected him let's recall that the u.s congress imposed sanctions against mohammed bin salman and against saudi arabia it demanded that the director of national intelligence release classified information regarding the killing of jamal khashoggi did the cia have a reporting of nbs demanding i don't want to talk about it you have to ask them all of those things were vetoed by donald trump and therefore prevented in many ways the working of the american democracy did mbs lie to you sir uh i don't i don't know you know who can really know but i can say this he's got many people now that say he had no knowledge what if the crown prince speaking to you the president of the united states directly lied to you well that he told me that he had nothing to do with it he told me that i would say maybe five times you just live with it because you need him well will anybody really know all right will anybody really know well it turns out we do now know president joe biden's taken the highly unusual step of releasing the secret findings of the cia investigation into the murder and it's here in black and white muhammad bin salman approved the operation to capture or kill jamal khashoggi according to the intelligence report the crown prince viewed the journalist as a threat and supported using violent measures to silence him the question now is what punishment will one of the west's strongest allies face for such a horrible crime i don't think mbs can change of course it's never been a democracy saudi arabia we're not going to lie but it's never been as repressive as it is now few people know the brutal reality of muhammad bin salman's regime better than lina al-hathlu her sister lujan is an internationally recognised human rights campaigner who was locked up for more than a thousand days for speaking her mind onto the my far left we have legendal hathaway and she became known for her challenging of the ban on women's driving while lujan languished in a saudi prison lena exiled in belgium has led an international campaign for her freedom they would electrocute her waterboard her she was being flogged beaten split at they would sexually harass her basically and even you know the electrocution they would also try to put it in sensitive places and laugh about it do you think muhammad bin salman is evil the very fact that that i don't dare say anything as harsh i think you have an answer luchane was finally released from prison earlier this year but remains banned from speaking about her arrest and is also barred from leaving saudi arabia there are reportedly more than 30 000 political prisoners in saudi arabia a sign of the crown prince's zero tolerance approach to any descent do you see obvious links between what happened to jamal khashoggi and the treatment of your sister absolutely of course it's the same regime it's the same people involved and also it's the same techniques i mean even the threats just saying to lujan that they could kill her and cut her body into pieces and throw it in the sewage system hopes were high that joe biden would bring muhammad bin salman into line after talking tough on the campaign trail khashoggi was in fact murdered and dismembered and i believe in the order of the crown prince and i would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them we were going to in fact make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are there's very little social redeeming value of the in the present government in saudi arabia but just like his predecessor the new president has now also decided not to come down hard on the saudis channel 4 reporter jonathan rugman says it's hard to see how the west will ever hold muhammad bin salman to account joe biden talked a big game on the campaign trail but by the time he's got to office he's come to the same conclusion as donald trump that better the devil you know the crown prince of saudi arabia was too big to fail we all know how regime change turned out in iraq and so the americans are treading a very careful line i mean jamal khashoggi was living 12 miles from the white house in virginia so this is extremely personal for the americans the significance of jamal khashoggi's murder is the implicit threat to anyone who criticizes saudi arabia they can be killed no matter where they are in the world what do you think happens to the body it is possible that jamal's body was transported back on on one of the planes that left istanbul back to saudi arabia on the night of the killing it's possible that those in riyadh wanted proof of his murder they wanted perhaps evidence they wanted his fingers perhaps they may have wanted his head as some kind of trophy we simply don't know then the turkish police said a lot of meat was bought for a barbecue that took place in the consul's garden just after the murder took place and the theory being that jamal's body was mixed with this meat and incinerated at a very high temperature [Music] it's been about two and a half years since his death and the time that has passed since there has not been a day there hasn't been a moment in that day when i have not taught about him countless times jamal khashoggi's fiancee hidicha has now begun legal proceedings against muhammad bin salman in the united states it's not just about seeking justice for the journalists death but also about trying to defend free speech for everyone in the future [Music] now that the truth has come out what are we going to do now what is going to be done now will the necessary action be taken what i want to say here is that mbs cannot run from this crime that he shouldn't be able to run from this and that i want justice to sooner or later prevail and that this crime shouldn't go unpunished [Music] hello i'm tom steinfert thanks for watching 60 minutes australia subscribe to our channel now for brand new stories and exclusive clips every week and don't miss out on our extra minute segments and full episodes of 60 minutes on ninenow.com.eu as well as the nine now app

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 2,110,749

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, karl stefanovic, 60Mins, #60Mins, jamal khashoggi, saudi arabia, crown prince, mohammed, bin salman, cia, donald trump, joe biden, declassified, murder, assassin, journalist, regime, free speech, mbs, free press, journalism

Id: eXEaDEbBzIk

Length: 19min 52sec (1192 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021