Khashoggi case sends fresh chill through Saudi elite

Months of repression had already convinced many they should think twice before speaking out

As each new revelation about the disappearance of the Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi reverberated around the world, there were few outward signs in his homeland that anything was amiss. Outsized images of a smiling King Salman and his son Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, gazed down on passing motorists from Riyadh’s glass tower blocks as normal.

In the glittering lobby of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh – previously the world’s most opulent prison during the detention of more than 30 of the kingdom’s most powerful princes and business leaders – guests chattered beneath a cluster of crystal globes that hung from the ceiling, their glow reflected in the polished marble floor. An eerie sense of a need for business as usual permeated throughout the capital and beyond.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2yPlEOR