Domestic State Terrorism

Lumumbaization of Khashoggi

Lumumba

The assassination of Patrice Lumumba

Born on July 2, 1925, Patrice Emery Lumumba was only 36 when he was brutally assassinated on January 17, 1961. After being executed by firing squad, his body was exhumed and dissolved in acid.  He was the first legally elected prime minister of the Republic of Congo after he helped the country gain its independence from Belgium in 1960.

MI6 and the death of Patrice Lumumba.

• ‘There was call for the ‘elimination’ of prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, some months before his murder… Belgian African affairs minister Count Harold d’Aspremont Lynden called for his ‘definitive elimination’ (The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo De Witte, Internet).
• ‘After weeks of repeated denials that it had anything to do with his disappearance, the kingdom eventually acknowledged that the murder was premeditated. MBS: Khashoggi to be ‘silenced as soon as possible’ (Yahoo Nov. 23 2018). 

The Assassination of Lumumba by Ludo De Witte…

• Sources: New Left Review, Socialist Review, Internet.

By the ceremonial handover of sovereignty (Independence Day, 30 June 1960), Baudouin’s address was a model of paternalism and complacency, and a paean of praise to the colonizing ‘genius’ of his notorious forebear Leopold II, responsible for creating an unrivalled system of forced labor that had killed millions of Africans [cf: ‘The Belgian colonizers of Congo used to sever the hands of villagers who didn’t harvest enough rubber’ (Zwangsarbeit/Severed Hand)].

Lumumba’s ‘reply came as a shock to the Belgian elite: independence was not a gift but ‘a struggle won, a struggle in which no effort, privation, suffering or drop of our blood was spared. Our wounds are too fresh and too smarting for us… We will make sure that the land of our country really provides for the good of her children’, adding that ‘the independence of the Congo marks a decisive step towards the liberation of the African continent as a whole’.

The moment established him as a thorn in the flesh of the Western powers: the threat of a radical… nationalism upsetting what, it had been hoped, would be a smooth transition to a neo-colonial order…

Congolese hopes for a peaceful transfer of sovereignty lasted less than a week…

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Confronted with his troops’ demands for the Africanization of the officer corps, General Janssens, Commander-in-Chief of the Force Publique, picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the blackboard: ‘Before Independence = After Independence’. Enraged, the soldiers took over the camp, disarming their superiors. Lumumba… sided with the troops…, raised public sector wages by 30 percent, encouraging miners in Katanga province to demand more pay from the owners. One of the owners just happened to be King Baudouin… Katanga was [because of its copper deposits] the Jewel in the crown of Africa… One company alone controlled 70 percent of the Congolese economy.

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Belgium, the US, France and the ‘elimination’ of Patrice Lumumba…

• ‘Gottlieb personally carried the bacteria to the Congo, but this murderous operation wasscrubbed before Lumumba could be infected….. Gottlieb told the Senate investigators that he selected one that ‘was supposed to procuce a disease that was….. indigenous to that area [of West Africa] and that could be fatal’….” (John Marks: The CIA and Mind Control).

With the UN as their instrument, ‘the US, Britain, France and Portugal shared intelligence in order to get rid of him’.

Lumumba and his companions were driven to an empty house… in the charge of a military police battalion under Captain Julien Gat. There, they were tortured… One of the Belgians noted that pieces of wood had been inserted under their toenails and fingernails”.

Then Lumumba, Mpolo and Okito were taken [by ‘Gat and another Belgian, Commissioner Verscheure’] to a remote place… Verscheure’s men began digging the grave. The firing squad lined up… Verscheure propped the prisoners up against the tree trunk. Later, half a kilo of spent cartridges were collected from the ground. Next day another Belgian police commissioner, Gerard Soete, and his brother Michel, with Congolese assistants, hacked them to pieces…, plunging the limbs into a petrol drum of sulphuric acid, scattering bones and ashes to the winds’.

*

“The Belgian government’s spokesmen were adamant when news of the murder of the Congo’s first elected prime minister was announced in February 1961… Belgium has absolutely nothing to do with the arrest, imprisonment, transfer and death of the former Prime Minister’… ‘Like you’, Foreign Minister Wigny insisted, ‘I learned about Lumumba’s transfer in the press’. It was ’emotional Africans’ [‘Revenge, tribal hatred’, as one Belgian intelligence officer put], meeting ‘without any of their European advisers’.

• C.f. (EU-State): ‘The German Zwickau terrorist cell…, with the suspected collusion of an intelligence service agent… At the time the police blamed many of the murders on a supposed Turkish gang war’.

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Patrice Lumumba’s Letter [from Thysville Prison] to [his wife] Pauline Lumumba, 1960

My beloved companion,

I write you these words not knowing whether you will receive them, when you will receive them, and whether I will still be alive when you read them…

Throughout my struggle for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant that the sacred cause to which my comrades and I have dedicated our entire lives would triumph in the end. But what we wanted for our country — its right to an honorable life, to perfect dignity, to independence with no restrictions — was never wanted by Belgian colonialism and its Western allies, who found direct and indirect, intentional and unintentional support among certain high officials of the United Nations, that body in which we placed all our trust when we called on it for help

• [C.f. in the file ‘Eine deutsche Art zu sühnen’; ‘The US-Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whtever measures it undertook”, see also above it].

…

Neither brutal assaults, nor cruel mistreatment, nor torture have ever led me to beg for mercy.

…

Do not weep for me, my companion; I know that my country, now suffering so much, ‘will be able to defend its independence and its freedom. Long live the Congo! Long live Africa!

PATRICE

***

Lumumbaization of Khashoggi

Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi, 59, Saudi journalist, US resident, Washington Post columnist, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 2018 to obtain documentation certifying he had divorced his ex-wife so he could remarry, was killed and dismembered in the consulate by a 15-person ‘assassination team’, while his Turkish fiancé waiting for him in the car in front of the building.

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Abdullah Alsaafin a veteran print and broadcast journalist who has previously worked for the BBC, Al Jazeera’, etc.: ‘As King Salman became the new monarch…, his son MBS [Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman] becoming more and more influential… Saudi newspapers filled with opinion articles…, glorifying MBS. Commentators also praised the opening of a path for normalised relations with Israel. Alsaafin recalls his meeting with Khashoggi who had been critical of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: ‘Jamal reiterated that the situation inside Saudi Arabia didn’t even allow a journalist to remain silent. Instead, he said, the regime wanted all journalists to lie and forge facts and… promote the foolish policies carried out by MBS… These journalists, who work in privately funded Saudi media outlets, consider themselves to be secular and have expressed their support for normalized relations with Israel. “The Saudi regime has worked over decades to provide a distorted… model of religion that does not conform to human nature or to the conditions of the times… The citizens grew up against this backdrop but formed their own world view thanks to the information revolution. Thus, they regard the Saudi model of religion as an obstacle, which to them, must be destroyed as the only way in order to free themselves from the shackles of their society.”

• 
• Hana Khamri Yahoo Dec 1 2018: Torture, Reform and women rights in Saudi Arabia.Women are being tortured for demanding basic rights in ‘reformist’ Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia.Today, every critical voice in Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly under threat, but the Saudi women’s rights activists are feeling the pressure the most, writes Al-Khamri.[File:AP]Hana Al-Khamri is a writer and analyst… She used to work as a journalist in Saudi Arabia’ which she left years ago. ‘She is the author of the upcoming book:. Female Journalists in Gender-Apartheid Saudi Arabia. 
• ‘On November 20 [2018], Amnesty International published a report detailing how Saudi women’s rights activists, arbitrarily arrested in a government crackdown earlier this year, have faced sexual harassment and torture during their interrogation. Citing three separate testimonies, the rights group said the detainees were held in solitary confinement and faced repeated electrocution and flogging, leaving some of them unable to stand or walk. One of the activists rights activists, arbitrarily arrested in a government crackdown earlier this year, have faced sexual harassment and torture during their interrogation. Citing three separate testimonies, the rights group said the detainees were held in solitary confinement and faced repeated electrocution and flogging, leaving some of them unable to stand or walk. One of the activists reportedly tried to take her own life repeatedly inside the prison’.

Alsaafin: ‘Our meeting ended, and later Jamal sent me a message on WhatsApp: “I’m pleased to have met you,” he wrote… Since the day of his disappearance, I have read this message countless times… The legacy of Jamal Khashoggi will live on and he will always be remembered as a model journalist who paid the ultimate price for exercising his freedom of expression. The world will not forget the grisly, gruesome death he suffered at the hands of a tyrant hellbent on “reforming” Saudi Arabia into a dictatorship with no breathing space for any difference of opinion let alone an oppositional stance’.

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The Saudi butcher Dr Salah Muhammed al-Tubaigy, the head of forensics at the Saudi General Security Department, cut off Khashoggi’s fingers and head… Turkey says it has recordings related to the killing… Turkish FM said he had listened to the recordings… ‘It can be heard how the forensics expert instructs the others: they should listen to music while he cuts up the body’.

• “Im KZ Majdanek sowie den Lagern Poniatowa und Trawniki (mußten) über 42000 Juden binnen Tagesfrist getötet werden… Die Opfer hatten die Massengräber selbst ausheben müssen… Die Schützen kippten ordentlich Schnaps, und aus Lautsprechern dröhnten… Operettenmusik und Schlager’ (File 1980-2004).

Jamal Khashoggi was strangled, and then his body was cut into pieces. The Saudi entourage, equipped with bone saw, covered the floor with plastic bags before dismembering. The reason they dismembered Khashoggi’s body was to dissolve his remains more easily. Traces of acid were found at the Saudi consul general’s residence in Istanbul, where the body was to be disposed of with the use of chemicals, dissolved in acid and vaporized.

Turkish media say CIA has recording of MBS ordering Khashoggi murder. So Israelis thought that the Saudi-Zionist alliance to steal the rest of Palestine was in danger and Netanyahu was fast to appeal to Trump ‘not to abandon Mohammed bin Salman just because a dissident journalist had been chopped up into pieces’ (Professor Hamid Dabashi). Donald Trump stated that a CIA assessment does not conclude that Prince Mohammad ordered the murder and emphasized to maintain a close alliance with Saudi Arabia despite Khashoggi’s death, warned gainst halting a Saudi arms deal: “We have $450bn, $110bn of which is a military order, but this is equipment and various things ordered from Saudi Arabia. Critics in US Congress and high-ranking officials in other countries have accused Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons’.

Saudi Arabia and its two chief supporters, the United States and Israel_ the immense financial and strategic interests that are invested in maintaining the US partnership with Saudi Arabia and its leadership [‘Trump… warned the US risked losing billions if it took punitive measures against Riyadh’ (Yahoo Dec 1 2018)].

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Authorities in Turkey — who say Khashoggi was murdered by a hit squad sent from Riyadh — are still searching for the journalist’s remains.

Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz tells Saudi leaders to return her fiance’s remains.

London – The fiancee of murdered Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi has demanded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reveal the whereabouts of his body.

Speaking for the first time outside Turkey, she said: “I want justice to be served – not only for those who murdered my beloved Jamal but for those who organised it and gave the order for it. These questions are not just my questions: they are being asked by millions.

“I want the role of the political leadership in this brutal killing to be brought to light.”

• Speaker after speaker at the homage organised by Middle East Monitor and the Al Sharq Forum to commemorate the Washington Post columnist placed the blame for his death squarely on the shoulders of bin Salman.

She also attacked US President Donald Trump who has limited his criticism of the Saudi leader, a close ally, and stressed the importance to the American economy of arms sales to the country.

President Trump… should not pave the way for a cover-up of my fiancee’s murder. Let’s not let money taint our conscience and compromise our values.

God have mercy on you my love Jamal.

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‘MBS communicated with adviser during Khashoggi killing: WSJ’. There have been messages between MBS and aide, Saud al-Qahtani. ‘Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) sent 11 messages to his closest adviser [Saud al-Qahtani], who… oversaw the operatives who killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the hours before and after the journalist’s murder on October 2′ (Yahoo Dec 2 2018).

Khashoggi killing: ‘Tell your boss deed is done’.

Kill team member phoned Saudi prince’s aide shortly after journalist’s murder to say mission accomplished, NYT reports.

“A phone call like that is about as close to a smoking gun as you are going to get,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer… was quoted as saying. “It is pretty incriminating evidence.”

‘He [MBS] told me that he had nothing to do with it’, Trump said, adding that ‘many people also said the crown prince had no knowledge of the killing’ (Yahoo Nov 19 2018).

‘President Donald Trump said… that the United States intends to remain a “steadfast partner” of Saudi Arabia even though ‘it could very well be’ that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) had knowledge of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi‘ (Yahoo Nov 23 2018).

Severed Hand

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Yahoo April 10 2019

Trump MBS Yahoo Aug 16 2019

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Yahoo Sept 10 2019: Audio transcripts of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder revealed

Turkish newspaper publishes detailed transcript of Saudi hit squad in the final moments of journalist’s assassination.

The Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper has released transcripts of audio recordings of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the Saudi hit squad that killed him inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year. 

The recordings, obtained by Turkey’s national intelligence and made public by the newspaper on Monday, detailed the conversations between the Saudi writer and members of the 15-man hit squad moments before his assassination on October 2, 2018.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor who was living in the United States, had gone to his country’s consulate to collect documents for his planned wedding before he was killed and his body dismembered.

When he entered the consulate, Khashoggi was greeted by a familiar face before being pulled by into a room, according to the Daily Sabah. 

“Please sit. We have to take you back

[to Riyadh]

,” Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a senior Saudi intelligence officer and the bodyguard of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said.

“There is an order from Interpol. Interpol demanded you be returned. We are here to take you,” Mutreb is quoted as saying. 

Khashoggi murder: Book reveals ‘new details’ about killing

Khashoggi responded: “There are no lawsuits against me. My fiancee is waiting outside for me.”

In the last 10 minutes before he was killed, Mutreb asked Khashoggi to “leave a message for your son”, saying not to worry if he could not reach the journalist.

When Khashoggi refused, Mutreb said: “Write it, Mister Jamal. Hurry up. Help us so we can help you, because in the end we will take you back to Saudi Arabia and if you don’t help us you know what will happen eventually.”

The operatives then drugged the Saudi journalist. His last words before losing consciousness were: “I have asthma. Do not do it, you will suffocate me.”

Sound of an autopsy saw dismembering the 59-year-old’s body can be heard at 1.39pm local time. The procedure lasted 30 minutes.

His body is yet to be recovered.

Turkey has called Khashoggi’s killing “premeditated murder” orchestrated by the Saudi government.

Saudi officials have countered that claim, insisting Khashoggi was killed in a “rogue operation”, after initially claiming he had left the building before vanishing.

‘I listen to music when I cut’

Saudi authorities have charged 11 unnamed suspects over Khashoggi’s murder, including five who could face the death penalty on charges of “ordering and committing the crime”.

The CIA has reportedly concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed ordered the killing, which officials in Riyadh deny.

During trials in Riyadh on Sunday, Daily Sabah revealed some of the statements of the hitmen who killed Khashoggi.

In the audio recorded minutes before Khashoggi entered the consulate building, Mutreb asked whether it will “be possible to put the trunk in a bag”.

In response, Salah Mohammed Abdah Tubaigy, a well-known Saudi forensics doctor, replied: “No. Too heavy, very tall, too.”

He added: “Actually, I’ve always worked on cadavers. 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 earphones and listen to music when I cut cadavers. In the meantime, I sip on my coffee and smoke. After I dismember it, you will wrap the parts into plastic bags, put them in suitcases and take them out [of the building].”

Khashoggi’s killing provoked widespread revulsion and marred the image of the crown prince. 

A report in the Washington Post in April said Saudi Arabia gave Khashoggi’s four children “million-dollar houses” and “monthly five-figure payments” as compensation for the killing of their father.