SAUDI CROWN PRINCE MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN a very dangerous man

Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance has opened a rift between Washington and Saudi Arabia, the chief Arab ally of the Trump administration. And it has badly damaged the reputation of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old power behind the Saudi throne, who this time may have gone too far for even for his staunchest supporters in the West.

The possibility that the young prince ordered a hit on a dissident poses challenges for President Trump and may turn once warm relationships toxic. It could convince those governments and corporations that had overlooked the prince’s destructive military campaign in Yemen, his kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister and his waves of arrests that he is a ruthless autocrat who will stop at nothing to get his enemies.

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For Khashoggi, a Tangled Mix of Royal Service and Islamist Sympathies

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FIFTEEN SAUDIS GO TO ISTANBUL IN TWO BUSINESS JETS, WITH A DOCTOR AND A HACKSAW MAN AMONG OTHERS, AND THEN SAY IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.

But international outrage mounted as Turkish officials leaked lurid details from their own investigation suggesting that he was murdered inside the consulate and dismembered by a team of 15 Saudi agents who flew in specifically to kill him.

The case has battered the international reputation of the kingdom and its 33-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has sought to sell himself to the world as a young reformer shaking off his country’s conservative past. But suspicions that such a complicated foreign operation could not have been launched without at least his tacit approval have driven away many of his staunchest foreign supporters.

Saudi Arabia said Saturday that Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi journalist who disappeared more than two weeks ago, died after an argument and fistfight with unidentified men inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Eighteen Saudi men have been arrested and are being investigated in the case, Saudi state-run media reported without identifying any of them.

State media also reported that Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the crown prince, had been dismissed, along with Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy director of Saudi intelligence, and other high-ranking intelligence officials. They did not say whether the men’s firing had a connection to the Khashoggi case or whether they were being investigated for playing a role in it.

nytimes.com

The Saudi General Who Could Take the Fall in the Khashoggi Case

Saudi rulers are weighing whether to blame Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, a high-ranking adviser to the crown prince, for the death of the journalist Jamal…