Jamal Khashoggi: A life lived on the line

Jamal Khashoggi held the hope of the world with him when he travelled to Sudan in 1995 to persuade Osama bin Laden to return to his homeland and renounce violence. He did not succeed, but it was a measure of the man's charisma and dedication that he tried.

To the end, Jamal Khashoggi never saw himself as a Saudi Arabian dissident, but rather a proud patriot. His self-imposed exile was a source of anguish and sorrow to him.

Months before his murder, he confided that he was homesick to his friends. His wife had divorced him after pressure from Saudi authorities, against her wishes, while he continued to live in a small apartment outside of Washington DC.

That was only the most recent twist in his life. 

He was forced to go into exile after a wave of arrests wracked the kingdom as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman extended his influence in a crackdown that saw many imprisoned. 

"It was painful for me several years ago when several friends were arrested," he wrote after departing from his home for the last time. "I said nothing. I didn't want to lose my job or my freedom. I worried about my family.

"I have made a different choice now. I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison."

But this was not the first time he's been targeted for his views. Throughout his life, he was dismissed from newsrooms, embassies and royal courts for speaking his mind.

Throughout it all, his friends and family say he kept trying to work from within a system he wished to reform, not into the image of a democracy, but a kingdom for justice, against tyranny; with a voice for the weak and downtrodden, and peace for all.

In a twist of irony, Saudi Arabian social media campaigns that have taken to defending the actions of his murders now use the Arabic hashtag #Saudi_kingdom_of_justice.

His friends knew him as warm, and sharp-witted, ever radiating peace and focus, no matter the circumstance. 

"If I didn't know he was a Muslim, I would think he was a monk," says Saad Djebbar, who once opposed him in court. The two would go on to become good friends.

But those who found themselves the subject of his prolific pen often chafed under the eloquent, direct scrutiny he subjected them to, which would eventually lead to his tragic murder.

Even in exile, he never saw himself as a revolutionary or a dissident, though he had come to be something of a father to dissidents in Saudi Arabia, as many were inspired by his example within the Kingdom, and outside of it. 

It was his staunch integrity that allowed him to be a man between two worlds. One dissident, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that it was his just nature that enraged the royal family, who preferred enemies they could smear or paint into demons. 

Another friend recalls, "He had a saying, 'Say your words, and go.' And he did." 

Early life

Coming from a well-known family of Turkish origin, Khashoggi spent his youth studying Islam, quickly rising to become a member of the kingdom's elite. 

He was born, as the son of a merchant on October 13 1958. His last name meant “spoon-maker” Turkish. His grandfather Mohammad had moved from Kayseri, in Turkish Anatolia, to the Hejaz region of the Arab peninsula when they were both under Ottoman rule.

His grandfather would go on to become the personal doctor to Ibn Saud, Saudi Arabia's founder, which granted his family respect and prominence. One of Khashoggi's uncles was Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, and Samira, who would go on to marry Mohamed Fayed, the former owner of Harrods.

One of Jamal’s cousins included Dodi, who died in the same accident as Princess Diana in 1997.

Following his stay in Medina, Jamal studied Business at Indiana State University, graduating in 1982. Following a stint in management, he began writing for English-language newspapers such as the Saudi Gazette and Arab News by the mid-1980's. It was in Indiana that he was introduced to political Islam, and he would later become an expert on the subject. 

Throughout his life, Jamal Khashoggi married and divorced three times, with two sons and two daughters from his first marriage, who survive him.

Before his death, he was engaged to Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish researcher. With plans to marry before his 60th birthday, it was to acquire confirmation of his divorced status that he went to the Saudi consulate on October 2. 

Ties to the Royal Family

Khashoggi once enjoyed close ties to the kingdom's ruling family, at times serving as an unofficial spokesman for Riyadh. Between 2003 and 2007, he was the media adviser to Prince Turki Al Faisal, former head of  Saudi intelligence and, at the time, ambassador to London. 

He also worked closely with Waleed bin Talal, billionaire, who was arrested by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and held in the Ritz Carlton before being forced to sign away a portion of his assets to the kingdom.

His Politics and Journey to Reform

Though he joined the Muslim Brotherhood at one point of his life, he left it for unexplained reasons. 

"The Muslim Brotherhood within Saudi Arabia was not a conventional thing, more like a school of thought," says Azzam Tamimi, a British Palestinian academic who was Khashoggi’s friend for over 30 years. 

"He would identify with us. He would link up with us...it was like being a member of a school of thought more than anything else."

He would go on to become the first journalist of a major Arab paper to interview Osama bin Laden in 1987.

At the time and until the mid-1990s when Bin Laden shifted focus to attacking the West, he was still a hero to many in his home country of Saudi Arabia for leading Arabs in their campaign to help fellow Muslims resist the Soviets in Afghanistan. Khashoggi spent some time with bin Laden in Jeddah when they were young, telling Peter Bergen in a 2005 interview that he knew him "slightly".

"We are from the same generation, [the] same background," he said. "Osama was just like many of us who [had] become part of the [Muslim] Brotherhood movement in Saudi Arabia. The only difference which set him apart from me and others was that he was more religious. More religious, more literal, more fundamentalist."

Following bin Laden's invitation to travel to Afghanistan and write about Arab fighters combating the USSR, Khashoggi would interview him several times up to 1995.

Khashoggi commented that by 1989 everyone was travelling to Afghanistan and radicalism crept in. He recalls that Abdullah Azzam, the founder of al-Qaeda was selective about who they let in; bin Laden, he said, was not. 

Khashoggi would recall jokes, about unexpected kinds of people who were turning up. 

"I remember this Belgian Muslim who came to Afghanistan, and six months before he was a bouncer at one of the bars there," he told Bergen.

Khashoggi asked bin Laden what would happen to the Arabi fighters in Afghanistan once fighting ends.

"They will go back to their countries, but the flame of jihad should continue elsewhere," bin Laden told Khashoggi. "It will be called al-Qaeda."

He would go on to publicly question why Saudi's were involved in the 9/11 hijackings. 

"Osama bin Laden's hijacked planes not only attacked New York and Washington, but they also attacked Islam as a faith and the values of tolerance and co-existence that it preaches," he wrote.

Throughout his life, his ties to hardliners that he worked with for his stories, would get him in trouble, often barring him from writing or appearing on media.

While some questioned his liberal ideas and accused him of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, those who knew him to say he was committed to dialogue, rather, arguing the Arab world should engage with political Islam instead of ignoring issues.

Career

Khashoggi began his career as a foreign correspondent covering the Soviet war in Afghanistan. 

Travelling as a foreign correspondent, he would later write for Saudi newspapers about the 1st Gulf War and in particular about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

In 1991, he became editor of Al Madina, one of Jeddah’s oldest newspapers, and in 1999 as deputy editor-in-chief of the English language Arab News. Four years later, he became editor of Al Watan, only to be fired a few months later for publishing a post that criticised the founder of Wahhabism, a conservative school of Islamic thought dominant in Saudi Arabia. 

He served as media advisor to Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi ambassador to London, and head of Saudi intelligence. He would return to Al Watan a second time in 2007 for three years until he resigned in 2010, in similar circumstances. 

He also wrote for the English-language Saudi Gazette, Okaz, Al Sharq Al Awsat and Al Hayat.

In 2015, Saudi billionaire Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal appointed him to run Al Arab television station in Bahrain, with a license for a no-holds-barred coverage of the Middle East. 

Within hours the channel was shuttered.

The beginning of the end

In June 2017, Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia for the US with only two suitcases, after fearing for his freedom following Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman's consolidation of power after sweeping arrests wracked the kingdom. Though he never openly opposed the prince, Khashoggi often wrote that a crackdown on dissent, and participation in the war in Yemen, were not in the kingdom’s best interests.

Only last November, months before his murder at the hands of his fellow nationals, he spoke to the BBC of his fears. 

“I'm worried for my country, my children and grandchildren – one-man rule is always bad, in any country”.

Once in exile, a Saudi dissident reports that he received offers from the Crown Prince's brother to return to Saudi Arabia where he would lead a new media agency. He rejected the offer. The Crown Prince's advisor also made a similar offer, only to find the same answer.

In the meantime, he had his own plans for the Middle East. At the heart of the legacy, he intended to leave was his plan for an advocacy group called Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN). 

Bruce Riedel, director of the Brookings Intelligence Project who knew Khashoggi from his time in London, said he knew what he was likely aware of what he was walking into when he entered the consulate.

After years living in diaspora and making his life bringing a better life for Saudi Arabia, he entered the consulate for the same reason he pushed for reforms: for love. 

In his last column, published posthumously, he emphasised his belief that free speech would bring about real change.

"Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda," he wrote, "ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face."