t comes as little surprise, sadly, that the Saudi thugs who slaughtered Jamal Khashoggi were a secret crew of enforcers for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. They had been watching, kidnapping, detaining and torturing Saudi dissidents for more than a year before they traveled to Istanbul to kill and dismember the Washington Post journalist.
According to a report in The Times by Mark Mazzetti and Ben Hubbard, citing officials who have read classified intelligence, the team is known to American officials as the “Saudi Rapid Intervention Group” and it carried out at least a dozen operations before the Khashoggi murder.
This comes as little surprise because of all the sordid information that has come out about the Saudi hit men and the crown prince since the brazen assassination of Mr. Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul shocked the world in October, and because of the clumsy initial attempts by Prince Mohammed to deny the killing and then to pin it on underlings who purportedly exceeded their orders and are now said to be standing trial in a courtroom no independent witnesses have been to.
In the five months since the killing, most of the world has learned that Prince Mohammed is not the modernizing liberal of the image he cultivated among Western leaders and visitors but rather a despot who suppressed those who challenged his image and his power.
