Age, Biography, and Wiki
Jamal Ahmad Hamza Khashoggi was born on October 13, 1958, in Medina, Saudi Arabia. He was the grandson of Muhammad Khashoggi, a Turkish doctor who served as the personal physician to King Abdulaziz Al Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia. Jamal Khashoggi was the nephew of Adnan Khashoggi, a renowned Saudi businessman and arms dealer known for his significant geopolitical influence and wealth.
| Occupation | Journalist |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 13 October 1958 |
| Age | 66 Years |
| Birth Place | Medina, Saudi Arabia |
| Horoscope | Libra |
| Country | Saudi Arabia |
| Date of death | 2 October, 2018 |
| Died Place | N/A |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is no detailed information available on Jamal Khashoggi's height and weight.
| Height | |
| Weight | |
| Body Measurements | |
| Eye Color | |
| Hair Color |
Dating & Relationship Status
Jamal Khashoggi was married to Rawia Ali, a Saudi Arabian woman, and later to Hanan Elatr. At the time of his death, he was engaged to Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish Ph.D. student.
Donald Trump Jr. promoted the idea that Khashoggi was a "jihadist". According to David Ignatius, Khashoggi was in his early 20s "a passionate member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The brotherhood was a secret underground fraternity that wanted to purge the Arab world of the corruption and autocratic rule it saw as a legacy of Western colonialism." According to The New York Times, Khashoggi "balanced what appears to have been a private affinity for democracy and political Islam with his long service to the royal [Saudi] family", and that "His attraction to political Islam helped him forge a personal bond with President Erdogan of Turkey". It also states that "Several of his friends say that early on Mr. Khashoggi also joined the Muslim Brotherhood", and that "Although he later stopped attending meetings of the Brotherhood, he remained conversant in its conservative, Islamist and often anti-Western rhetoric, which he could deploy or hide depending on whom he was seeking to befriend". The newspaper also writes that "By the time he reached his 50s, Mr. Khashoggi's relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood was ambiguous. Several Muslim Brothers said this week that they always felt he was with them. Many of his secular friends would not have believed it".
On 20 November 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump rejected the CIA's conclusion that Crown Prince bin Salman had ordered the killing. He issued a statement saying "it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn't" and that "In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." Two days later, Trump denied that the CIA had even reached a conclusion. His statements were criticized by Congressional representatives from both parties, who promised to investigate the matter. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who was briefed by the CIA on the agency assessment, accused President Trump of lying about the CIA findings.
According to Bob Woodward's book Rage, Trump protected bin Salman from Congress following the murder of Khashoggi. According to an interview with Woodward mentioned in the book, Trump boasted of saving bin Salman's reputation, saying "I saved his ass". Trump also claimed that Saudi Arabia has invested hundreds of billions of dollars into U.S. military equipment and training, and defended his decision to preserve the Saudi relationship as a means of protecting the billions of dollars of annual arms sales between the two countries.
Khashoggi was reportedly married and divorced at least three times, though there is contradictory information on to whom he was married and when. With his wife Rawia al-Tunisi he had four children: sons Salah and Abdullah and daughters Noha and Razan Jamal. He was also married to Alaa Nassif. On 2 June 2018, Khashoggi married Hanan Elatr, an Egyptian citizen, in an Islamic Ceremony in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. She obtained a certified, signed copy of the marriage certificate in July 2021 verifying the marriage. Hanan also produced pictures of their ceremony, and one of Khashoggi's friends additionally confirmed he attended the wedding.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Rawia al-Tunisi Alaa Nassif Hanan Atr (m. 2018) |
| Sibling | |
| Children |
Net Worth and Salary
Since Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist and not a businessman, his net worth is not as well-documented as that of his uncle Adnan Khashoggi. However, as a prominent journalist, he likely earned a respectable income from his work with publications like Middle East Eye and The Washington Post. His exact net worth at the time of his death is not publicly disclosed.
Career, Business, and Investments
Jamal Khashoggi's career was marked by his involvement in Saudi media and his role as a dissident. He worked as an editor for several Saudi publications, including Al-Watan, and was a columnist for The Washington Post. His writings often critiqued the Saudi government and its policies, leading to his exile in the United States. He was not known for any business or investment ventures, focusing primarily on journalism and advocacy.
Khashoggi received his elementary and secondary education in Saudi Arabia and obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration from Indiana State University in the United States in 1982.
Khashoggi began his career as a regional manager for Tihama Bookstores from 1983 to 1984. Later he worked as a correspondent for the Saudi Gazette and as an assistant manager for Okaz from 1985 to 1987. He continued his career as a reporter for various daily and weekly Arab newspapers from 1987 to 1990, including Asharq Al-Awsat, Al Majalla and Al Muslimoon. He also served with the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Agency, and possibly worked with the United States, during the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.
Khashoggi criticized Abdel Fatteh el-Sisi's government in Egypt. According to Khashoggi, "Egypt has jailed 60,000 opposition members and is deserving of criticism as well." Khashoggi wrote that despite U.S. President Barack Obama's "declared support for democracy and change in the Arab world in the wake of the Arab Spring, then President Barack Obama did not take a strong position and reject the coup against Egyptian President-elect Mohamed Morsi. The coup led to the military's return to power in the largest Arab country – along with tyranny, repression, corruption, and mismanagement." Morsi's government was removed from office in July 2013.
CNN described Khashoggi as a "journalist simply doing his job who evolved from an Islamist in his twenties to a more liberal position by the time he was in his forties," and that "by 2005, Khashoggi said he had also rejected the Islamist idea of creating an Islamic state and had turned against the religious establishment in Saudi Arabia. According to CNN he also had embraced the Enlightenment and the American idea of the separation of church and state." According to Egypt Today, Khashoggi revealed "yes, I joined the Muslim Brotherhood organization when I was at university; and I was not alone. Some of the current ministers and deputies did but later every one of us developed their own political tendencies and views." Politically, Khashoggi was supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood as an exercise in democracy in the Muslim world. In one of his own blogs, he argued for the Muslim Brotherhood, and wrote that: "there can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it." The Irish Times journalist Lara Marlowe wrote that "If Christian democracy was possible in Europe, why could Arabs not be ruled by Muslim democracy, Jamal asked. That may explain his friendship with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan...Erdogan constituted the greatest hope of Muslim democracy, until he too turned into a despot."
According to an article from Forensic News, Oren Kesler, then Director of Operations at Wikistrat, told a subordinate in a July 2018 email that Jamal Khashoggi worked for Wikistrat, but it is unclear when Khashoggi was hired by Wikistrat. When a Wikistrat employee asked about Khashoggi's recruitment shortly after his death, Kesler denied Khashoggi's employment with the firm. Wikistrat later admitted in an email to Forensic News that Khashoggi did in fact work for the firm. Articles published by The Daily Beast and The New York Times reported that the founder of Wikistrat, Joel Zamel, met with General Ahmed al Assiri, a Saudi general involved in the Khashoggi's assassination, in early 2017 to discuss covert operations to destabilize Iran. One of the topics discussed was assassinating dissidents. According to Zamel's lawyers, Zamel turned down the offer to participate in "lethal operations," i.e. assassination operations.
On 13 December, in opposition to the Trump administration's position, the United States Senate unanimously passed a resolution that held bin Salman personally responsible for the death of Khashoggi. On the same day, the Senate voted 56–41 to pass legislation to end U.S. military aid for the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, a vote attributable to senators' desires to punish Saudi Arabia for the Khashoggi murder and for the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, including a famine and human rights violations. This was the first-ever invocation of the War Powers Act by the Senate. The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly blocked consideration of any War Powers Resolution restricting U.S. actions relating to Yemen for the rest of the year.
On 17 November 2022, the Biden administration ruled that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has immunity from a lawsuit over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Senior Democratic lawmakers sharply criticized the Biden administration's action. Legal experts said that the U.S. government's position will likely lead judge John Bates to dismiss a civil case brought against Prince Mohammed and his alleged accomplices by Hatice Cengiz.
In 2020, a documentary on the assassination of Khashoggi and the role played by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was made by Oscar-winning film director and producer, Bryan Fogel. However, it took eight months for Fogel to find a streaming service for The Dissident, which was released by an independent company.
Social Network
Jamal Khashoggi was active on social media platforms, particularly Twitter, where he shared his views on politics and social issues. His presence on these platforms contributed to his international recognition and influence.
Jamal Ahmad Hamza Khashoggi (13 October 1958 – 2 October 2018) was a Saudi journalist, dissident, author, columnist for Middle East Eye and The Washington Post, and a general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel who was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by agents of the Saudi government at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Khashoggi served as editor for the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan, turning it into a platform for Saudi progressives. Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia in September 2017 and went into self-imposed exile. He said that the Saudi government had "banned him from Twitter", and he later wrote newspaper articles critical of the Saudi government. Khashoggi had been sharply critical of the Saudi rulers, King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He also opposed the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.
In 1991, Khashoggi became managing editor and acting editor-in-chief of Al Madina and his tenure in that position lasted until 1999. During this period he was also a foreign correspondent in such countries as Afghanistan, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan, and in the Middle East. He then was appointed a deputy editor-in-chief of Arab News, and served in the post from 1999 to 2003.
Khashoggi wrote in a Post column on 3 April 2018 that Saudi Arabia "should return to its pre-1979 climate, when the government restricted hard-line Wahhabi traditions. Women today should have the same rights as men. And all citizens should have the right to speak their minds without fear of imprisonment." He also said that Saudis "must find a way where we can accommodate secularism and Islam, something like what they have in Turkey." In a posthumous (17 October 2018) article, "What the Arab world needs most is free expression", Khashoggi described the hopes of Arab world press freedom during the Arab Spring and his hope that an Arab world free press, independent from national governments, would develop so that "ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face."
In the Post, he criticized the Saudi Arabian-led blockade against Qatar, Saudi Arabia's dispute with Lebanon, Saudi Arabia's diplomatic dispute with Canada, and the Kingdom's crackdown on dissent and media. Khashoggi supported some of Crown Prince's reforms, such as allowing women to drive, but he condemned Saudi Arabia's arrest of Loujain al-Hathloul, who was ranked third in the list of "Top 100 Most Powerful Arab Women 2015", Eman al-Nafjan, Aziza al-Yousef, and several other women's rights advocates involved in the women to drive movement and the anti male-guardianship campaign.
According to Khashoggi, Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri's forced resignation in a live television broadcast from Saudi Arabia on 4 November 2017 "could in part be due to the 'Trump effect,' particularly the U.S. president's strong bond with MBS. The two despise Iran and its proxy Hezbollah, a sentiment the Israelis share."
According to The Washington Post, while "Khashoggi was once sympathetic to Islamist movements, he moved toward a more liberal, secular point of view, according to experts on the Middle East who have tracked his career."
According to Anthony Cordesman, the national security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Khashoggi's "ties to the Muslim Brotherhood do not seem to have involved any links to extremism." According to The Spectator, "Khashoggi and his fellow travellers believe in imposing Islamic rule by engaging in the democratic process", and that "In truth, Khashoggi never had much time for western-style pluralistic democracy", and that he "was a political Islamist until the end, recently praising the Muslim Brotherhood in The Washington Post", and that he "frequently sugarcoated his Islamist beliefs with constant references to freedom and democracy." According to others, Khashoggi was critical of Salafism, the ultra-conservative Sunni movement, though "not as a French liberal, but as a moderate Muslim reformist".
Khashoggi was acquainted with Osama bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s in Afghanistan while bin Laden was championing his jihad against the Soviets. Khashoggi interviewed bin Laden several times, usually meeting bin Laden in Tora Bora, and once more in Sudan in 1995. According to The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, "Khashoggi couldn't have traveled with the mujahideen that way without tacit support from Saudi intelligence, which was coordinating aid to the fighters as part of its cooperation with the CIA against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. ... Khashoggi criticized Prince Salman, then governor of Riyadh and head of the Saudi committee for support to the Afghan mujahideen, for unwisely funding Salafist extremist groups that were undermining the war."
Khashoggi wrote in response to the September 11 attacks: "The most pressing issue now is to ensure that our children can never be influenced by extremist ideas like those 15 Saudis who were misled into hijacking four planes that fine September day, piloting them, and us, straight into the jaws of hell."
The New York Times describes that after SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, Khashoggi mourned his old acquaintance and what he had become. He wrote on Twitter: "I collapsed crying a while ago, heartbroken for you Abu Abdullah", using bin Laden's nickname, and continued: "You were beautiful and brave in those beautiful days in Afghanistan before you surrendered to hatred and passion."
Khashoggi relocated to the United States in June 2017 where he continued writing for Middle East Eye and began writing for The Washington Post in September 2017.
According to The Spectator, "With almost two million Twitter followers, he was the most famous political pundit in the Arab world and a regular guest on the major TV news networks in Britain and the United States." In 2018, Khashoggi established a new political organisation called "Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN)", with the aim of promoting democratic movements in the Arab world.
In December 2018, The Washington Post revealed that Khashoggi's columns "at times" were "shaped" by an organization funded by Saudi Arabia's regional nemesis, Qatar, including by proposing his topics, giving him drafts, goading him, and giving him research.
The Saudi Arabian government changed its story several times. Initially, it denied the death and claimed that Khashoggi had left the consulate alive. Eighteen days later, it said he had been strangled inside the consulate during a fistfight. Eighteen Saudis were arrested, including the team of fifteen who had been sent to "confront him". The "fistfight" story was contradicted on 25 October when Saudi Arabia's attorney general said the murder was premeditated.
The indictment by the Istanbul prosecutor was based on: Istanbul prosecutor will try the accused in absentia as none of the accused are in Turkey and seek life sentences for 18 of them and 2 (al-Qahtani and Asiri) with incitement of first-degree murder. In the meantime, Turkey accused Saudi officials of obscuring investigations at the consulate while Saudis said that the Istanbul prosecutor has not complied with their requests to share information.
On 3 July 2020, Hatice Cengiz, the fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi spoke at the opening of the trial of his assassination at the Turkish court stating that the Washington Post columnist was killed by a team of Saudi agents inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul through "a great betrayal and deception," and she asked that all persons responsible for his killing be brought to justice.
Vanity Fair reported that "several House Republicans have mounted a whisper campaign to discredit Khashoggi—or at least, to knock his reputation down a few notches—based on his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and his role as an embedded journalist who covered Osama bin Laden. ... The campaign to discredit Khashoggi, which might have once been executed surreptitiously, is now front and center on Twitter and echoing on Fox News".
Education
Jamal Khashoggi received his education at Indiana State University in the United States, where he studied business administration.
At the time of his death Khashoggi was planning to marry Hatice Cengiz, a 36-year-old Ph.D. candidate at a university in Istanbul. The couple had met in May 2018 during a conference in the city. Khashoggi, a Saudi national, visited the Saudi consulate on 2 October to obtain paperwork that would allow him to marry Cengiz.
