Values versus interests in the Khashoggi case

The common excuse is to wait for more evidence to emerge from the investigation.

No nation it seems, including Australia, wants to jeopardise important commercial interests by pursuing the moral issue to the point where it is prepared to cancel existing contracts, or push the Saudis to the point where they retaliate by terminating valuable financial relationships.

Turkey which has a long-term regional agenda seems to be taking its foot off the pedal as it talks behind the scenes to Saudi Arabia. Turkish President Erdogan’s speech on October 23 that promised to bring forward new revelations was unexpectedly moderate, and Erdogan’s demand that 18 Saudis be sent to Turkey for trial was a throwaway comment because he knows it is not going to happen.

In any case, since the purge of the judiciary in Turkey, it’s unlikely Turkey could mount a credible trial on that scale. It would also draw attention to the large number of journalists (over 200) jailed by Erdogan.

Erdogan would like to see the downfall of ruthless Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman because he will be a formidable regional adversary if he remains in office, but Erdogan knows that Saudi Arabia has overcome worse setbacks in the past, including the fallout from 15 Saudis being involved in the 9/11 attack.

The Trump Administration needs to have a strong Saudi Arabia for its anti-Iran policy to have much traction in the Middle East, and no doubt the Trump family is looking to its commercial interests going forward - so the US can be expected to assist Saudi Arabia with damage control behind the scenes.

One lesson that nations should take away from this fiasco is that if you are going to eliminate someone on foreign soil, don’t send a large team to do it.

Far better to use a professional assassin to allow some distance to be kept between the contractor and the perpetrator. Being an investigative journalist, Khashoggi would have made many enemies, and while suspicion might have fallen on the Saudis, there would no doubt be others with a motivation to kill him - such as the Egyptians.

When Russians eliminated prominent Chechen Sulim Yamadayev in Dubai on March 28, 2009, the single perpetrator managed to leave the country before the investigation could get under way. A week later, Dubai police accused Adam Delimkhanov of ordering the assassination. (Delimkhanov was a member of the Russian State Duma for the United Russia party.) Later, Interpol issued arrest warrants for seven Russian citizens in connection with the killing, but - as with subsequent Russian-organised assassinations - no one is likely to be arrested.

Had the Saudis adopted a similar discreet approach, Khashoggi could have been eliminated and it would not have mattered much whether his body was disposed of or not. Removing someone from a city area, dead or alive, is always going to be difficult given the number of surveillance systems that can be used to track movement, particularly around diplomatic premises.

The Israelis are far better at this sort of thing than Saudi Arabia. Even so, they badly underestimated the level of high-quality modern surveillance devices in-place when on January 19, 2010, Mossad deployed a 26-person hit team to eliminate Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in the five-star Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai.

That oversight led to considerable embarrassment for Israel when all the team members were publicly identified from CCTV and electronic data, and it annoyed the US when some members of the Mossad team transited through the US.

Australia became involved when it was discovered that some of the team used counterfeit or fraudulently obtained Australian passports.

Soon after this occurred, Australia (under the Rudd government) abstained on a UN motion to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes committed during the Gaza War, a motion that Australia had previously opposed, and on May 24, 2010, the Australian government expelled an Israeli diplomat (the resident Mossad agent) after concluding that there was "no doubt Israel was behind the forgery of four Australian passports" related to the assassination.

Turkey undoubtedly has other lurid details it could release or leak about the Khashoggi assassination, but further revelations might well jeopardise some of its intelligence collection methodologies and reduce its bargaining leverage with Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, the Morrison government has refused to rule out an arms export ban to Saudi Arabia - but any punitive measures Australia takes will be down to political expediency, rather than moral outrage.

Clive Williams is a visiting professor at the ANU’s Centre for Military and Security Law and an adjunct professor at ADFA.