Jamal Khashoggi: Fallen critic of 'extremist' Saudi Arabia

Khashogi went into self-imposed exile in the US in 2017 after falling out with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Jamal Khashoggi, whose gruesome 2018 murder was "approved" by Saudi Arabia's crown prince, according to a US intelligence report, was a prominent journalist and critic of the ultra-conservative kingdom's government.

The 59-year-old Washington Post contributor went into self-imposed exile in the United States in 2017 after falling out with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who had become de facto ruler months earlier.

Turkish officials say he was killed in his country's Istanbul consulate on October 2, 2018, by a 15-man Saudi squad who strangled him and cut his body into pieces.

His remains were never found.

In a partially redacted two-year-old report released Friday by President Joe Biden's administration, US intelligence concluded that the prince "approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi."

Read | Mohammed bin Salman: The reformist prince who shook up Saudi Arabia

"The crown prince views Khashoggi as a threat to the kingdom and broadly supported using violent measures if necessary to silence him," it said.

In September last year, a Saudi court overturned five death sentences in its final ruling and handed jail terms of up to 20 years to eight unnamed defendants after secretive legal proceedings.

The verdict came after Khashoggi's sons "pardoned" the killers in May last year, paving the way for a less severe punishment.

Two top figures, who are part of Prince Mohammed's inner circle, were investigated over the killing and exonerated.

Both deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri and the royal court's media adviser Saud al-Qahtani were sacked shortly after the murder but eventually cleared "due to insufficient evidence".

Khashoggi once served as an adviser to the Saudi government but later became a vociferous critic of Prince Mohammed's policies, speaking out in both the Arab and Western press.

Never one to mince his words, Khashoggi described a new Saudi era of "fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming" in an article published in the Post in 2017.

In a March 2018 editorial in The Guardian, co-authored with historian Robert Lacey, Khashoggi wrote: "For his domestic reform programme, the crown prince deserves praise. But at the same time, the brash and abrasive young innovator has not encouraged or permitted any popular debate."

"He appears to be moving the country from old-time religious extremism to his own 'You-must-accept-my-reform' extremism, without any consultation -- accompanied by arrests and the disappearance of his critics."

Khashoggi fled the country in September 2017, months after Prince Mohammed was appointed heir to the throne and amid a campaign that saw dozens of dissidents arrested, including intellectuals and Islamic preachers.

His criticisms of Saudi Arabia's policies included its role in Yemen, where Riyadh leads a military coalition fighting alongside the government in its war against the Iran-backed Huthi rebels.

Read | Saudi Arabia rejects US intelligence report on Khashoggi's killing

He also opposed a 2017 Saudi-led boycott of Qatar, a tiny Gulf emirate that found itself isolated for more than three years over its allegedly close ties to extremist groups and Iran.

Khashoggi said he had been banned from writing in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, owned by Saudi Prince Khaled bin Sultan al-Saud, over his defence of the Muslim Brotherhood which Riyadh has blacklisted as a terrorist organisation.

The writer said Saudi authorities banned him from using his verified Twitter account after he said the country should be "rightfully nervous about a Trump presidency".

Former US president Donald Trump had repeatedly expressed support for Prince Mohammed, describing him as a friend who was doing a "spectacular job".

Trump said he was "extremely angry" about Khashoggi's murder but that nobody had "pointed a finger" at the kingdom's leader.

Khashoggi came from a prominent Saudi family with Turkish origins.

He was born in the western Saudi city of Medina, revered in Islam as the burial place of the Prophet Mohammed.

After a youth spent studying Islamic ideology, he later embraced more liberal ideas.

He began his career as a journalist with Saudi dailies in the 1980s, covering the Afghanistan conflict.

But the authorities came to see Khashoggi as too progressive and he was forced to resign as editor-in-chief of Al-Watan in 2003.

However, Khashoggi retained ambiguous ties to Saudi authorities, having held advisory positions in Riyadh and Washington -- including to Prince Turki al-Faisal, who ran Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency for more than 20 years.