Murder explanation: Khashoggi put up a helluva fight against 16 fellow Saudis!!

It is safe to say that not a single person in the universe apart from Donald Trump believes that Jamal Khashoggi died as a result of a fisticuffs inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He was strangled in the brawl with 16 other people in the room. The additional details provided by the Turkish security authorities which indicate that Khashoggi, having died, was decapitated and cut up into small pieces and shoved into black bin bags and possibly buried in forests outside Istanbul, are not mentioned in the Riyadh palace explanation for the demise of the Saudi dissident journalist. But the man with the saw, one of the visiting assassins who helped bring Khashoggi's life to an untimely and brutal end, has been arrested. And of course the official statement from Riyadh following an initial investigation did not say anything about who from the ruling regime in Saudi Arabia authorised/ordered the murder. But Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's closest aide was among those dismissed from his job. So he acted without any knowledge of his boss? Clearly this story is going to run and run until the appropriate members of the Saudi hierarchy are named and shamed and also booted out from the ruling elite. But Trump has thrown his weight behind the Saudi regime and insisted that last night's explanation was credible. Even Lindsey Graham, the robust senator from South Carolina who is supportive of Trump, has pronounced his total disbelief at the Riyadh statement and wanted to know why the blame had not been placed on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Khashoggi's poor fiancee who was the first person to sound the alarm when her boyfriend failed to exit the consulate - she had been waiting outside - deserves to know the full facts however horrible they are. The Turks are now saying they will reveal all, putting the video and audio tapes into the public domain. This will then place the Crown Prince and Trump in a trickier-than-ever situation. How credible will the Riyadh statement then look with all the gory details and the screams from the journalist as he is interrogated and tortured? Death from a fight is one thing, death by a team of assassins intent on murder and extermination is quite another. So a second statement will be required from Riyadh in due course. The Saudis started with a lie - that Khashoggi had left the consulate alive - and were only forced into acknowledging his death inside the consulate after the international uproar. They were obviously hoping that this latest explanation would appease everyone. They were naive and wrong.