Before the Istanbul tragedy, the killers planned to liquidate Khashoggi in London

Osman Boushikhi-London

"I leave London and Palestine in mind," wrote Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi as he left the British capital, where he attended a conference marking the 25th anniversary of the Oslo agreement, heading to Istanbul, where he was killed at his country's consulate there last year.

Two days before he left London, the English section of the BBC interviewed Khashoggi, saying that "such a conference is difficult to convene now in the region, because the rates of freedom are deteriorating in most of its countries."

He added that "most Arab countries are in a state of collapse, as is the case with Libya, Syria and Yemen, and they have no interest in discussing the Palestinian file because their tragedies are enough. In a country like Saudi Arabia or Egypt, the authorities are not interested in such issues that motivate people and gather their word, because they They want to subjugate them instead. "

British sources have reported that Saudi authorities initially attempted to assassinate Khashoggi in London, the way Russian double spy Sergei Scribal, who with his daughter Yulia, was poisoned with nerve gas `` Novichuk '' in southern England in March 2018.

The British newspaper "Express" confirmed this hypothesis, saying that the device "MI6" was on high alert during the four days when Khashoggi was in London, adding that two Saudi intelligence and three senior military officials were in Turkey at the time, in preparation for travel To britain.

"Khashoggi's return to Saudi Arabia would have been carried out by force," said former Financial Times columnist Owen Wilson. "Riyadh was looking for a suitable foreign country where Khashoggi would come to send a team from there."

Intelligence
Memos intercepted by the British Government Communications Organization, which is responsible for providing intelligence signals and ensuring information to the government and the armed forces, also indicated that Saudi officials were monitoring Khashoggi while in London.

British intelligence sources confirmed her knowledge of "something cooked in secret" in the first week of September 2018, about three weeks before Khashoggi's death.

British media quoted a friend of Khashoggi, who asked not to be named, said Khashoggi had been seeking documents in London "proving accusations of Saudi Arabia of using chemical weapons in its ongoing war in Yemen," and therefore the authorities in Riyadh strongly wanted to get rid of him.

Like Khashoggi, some of his killers also lived in the British capital, including Maher Abdul Aziz, a singer who lived in London in 2007, as confirmed by cartoonist Ghanem al-Dossari, who lives in exile in Britain and is known as a singer.

There were frequent reports of a singer working as a security attaché at his country's embassy in Britain before he became interested in piracy.

The Guardian newspaper published an article in which it quoted a source in Riyadh, "warned her of attempts to be targeted by the Cyber ​​Security Unit in the wake of the killing of Khashoggi."

The newspaper pointed out that it then received a copy of a document supporting this claim, saying that it was unable to verify its authenticity completely, and that the document was "permitting the penetration of its servers and accounts belonging to two of its correspondents, and signed by a senior aide to the Saudi Crown Prince."

A few days after Khashoggi's murder, Amnesty International activists gathered on the street where the Saudi embassy is located in the Mayfair neighborhood of central London, symbolically calling Khashoggi the street.