General Middle East & North Africa Thread

The C.I.A. has evidence that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, communicated repeatedly with a key aide around the time that a team believed to have been under the aide’s command assassinated Jamal Khashoggi, according to former officials familiar with the intelligence.

The adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, topped the list of Saudis who were targeted by American sanctions last month over their suspected involvement in the killing of Mr. Khashoggi. American intelligence agencies have evidence that Prince Salman and Mr. Qahtani had 11 exchanges that roughly coincided with the hit team’s advance into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where Mr. Khashoggi was murdered.

The exchanges are a key piece of information that helped solidify the C.I.A.’s assessment that the crown prince ordered the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Virginia resident who had been critical of the Saudi government.

“This is the smoking gun, or at least the smoking phone call,” said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. official now at the Brookings Institution. “There is only one thing they could possibly be talking about. This shows that the crown prince was witting of premeditated murder.”

Mr. Qahtani has been one of Prince Mohammed’s closest advisers. When the head of the hit team, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, was recorded by Turkish intelligence saying “tell your boss” that the team had carried out the mission, he was believed by American intelligence agencies to have been communicating with Mr. Qahtani.

People briefed on the intelligence said they believed that the 11 exchanges between Prince Mohammed and Mr. Qahtani could very well have been the time when the aide shared the news.

Current and former officials insisted that while the communications are suggestive and reinforce the intelligence agency’s conclusions about the culpability of the crown prince, they are not the kind of definitive, direct evidence that President Trump has suggested would be needed to convince him that Prince Mohammed ordered the killing.

Such evidence, the current and former officials said, is rarely collected, and the C.I.A. and other agencies often make their conclusions based on imperfect information. The C.I.A. has told lawmakers that it has medium to high confidence that Prince Mohammed ordered the killing. Medium to high certainty is a level short of high confidence, and demonstrates that the agency lacks a recording in which the crown prince orders the killing.

CNN) "I can't breathe." These were the final words uttered by Jamal Khashoggi after he was set upon by a Saudi hit squad at the country's consulate in Istanbul, according to a source briefed on the investigation into the killing of the Washington Post columnist.

The source, who has read a translated transcript of an audio recording of Khashoggi's painful last moments, said it was clear that the killing on October 2 was no botched rendition attempt, but the execution of a premeditated plan to murder the journalist.

During the course of the gruesome scene, the source describes Khashoggi struggling against a group of people determined to kill him.

"I can't breathe," Khashoggi says.

"I can't breathe."

"I can't breathe."

The transcript notes the sounds of Khashoggi's body being dismembered by a saw, as the alleged perpetrators are advised to listen to music to block out the sound.

And, according to the source, the transcript suggests that a series of phone calls are made. Turkish officials believe the calls were placed to senior figures in Riyadh, briefing them on progress.

Some of the details in the transcript seen by CNN's source have emerged in previous reports of the recording's content. But this is the fullest account of the transcript that has so far been published.

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted on Thursday to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen in the strongest show of bipartisan defiance against President Trump’s defense of the kingdom over the killing of a dissident journalist.

The 56-to-41 vote was a rare move by the Senate to limit presidential war powers and sent a potent message of disapproval for a nearly four-year conflict that has killed thousands of civilians and brought famine to Yemen. Moments later, senators unanimously approved a separate resolution to hold Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia personally responsible for the death of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

Together, the votes were an extraordinary break with Mr. Trump, who has refused to condemn the prince and dismissed United States intelligence agencies’ conclusions that the heir to the Saudi throne directed the grisly killing.

While the House will not take up the measure by the end of the year, the day’s votes signal that Congress will take on Mr. Trump’s support of Saudi Arabia when Democrats take control of the House next month.

The action indicated a growing sense of urgency among lawmakers in both parties to punish Saudi Arabia for Mr. Khashoggi’s death, and to question a tradition of Washington averting its gaze from the kingdom’s human rights abuses in the interest of preserving a strategically important relationship.

“What the Khashoggi event did, I think, was to focus on the fact that we have been led into this civil war in Yemen, half a world away, into a conflict in which few Americans that I know can articulate what American national security interest is at stake,” said Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. “And we’ve done so, following the lead of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

The resolution was written by Mr. Lee and Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont. It was an unusual invocation of the War Powers Act, a 1973 law by which Congress sought at the end of the Vietnam War to reassert its constitutional role in deciding when the United States would go to war.

Mr. Sanders called it the first time Congress had used the law to make clear “that the constitutional responsibility for making war rests with the United States Congress, not the White House.”

“Today, we tell the despotic regime in Saudi Arabia that we will not be part of their military adventurism,” he said.

Seven Republican senators joined Democrats to pass the resolution: Mr. Lee, Susan Collins of Maine, Steve Daines of Montana, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Todd Young of Indiana.

....Senators in both parties described the twin measures as a direct response to the refusal by Mr. Trump and his administration to hold Saudi Arabia to account for Mr. Khashoggi’s death — and a way to counter the president’s assertion that the money to be made from arms sales to the kingdom was enough to justify turning a blind eye to such a deed.

Last month the U.S. government confirmed that an American citizen had died in Syrian captivity. Sources concluded that Layla Shweikani, a U.S. citizen with Syrian roots, had been tortured and then executed.

The response? Nothing. Neither the U.S. government nor the American public reacted in any noticeable way.

“It’s disheartening that there not only has been no outrage over the murder of an American by the Assad regime, but that there has been little to no coverage on her story by our national media,” Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) told me this week. “I’ll continue to ask questions, I’ll continue to speak out for Layla, and will urge my colleagues to do the same.”

Shweikani lived with her family in a suburb of Chicago. Appalled by the destruction of the war raging in her ancestral homeland, she went back in 2015 to help those devastated by the conflict.

Given that at least 6 million people have been displaced inside the country, there was plenty to do. She took part in organizing and delivering relief to the worst-hit regions. She was a humanitarian, and it was for that work that she ended up going to prison and losing her life.

In February 2016, Shweikani was arrested along with some of her relatives and aid workers. Little was known about her whereabouts. She was being held in solitary confinement with no contact with the outside world.

Finally in December 2016, the Czech Embassy — which represents U.S. interests in Syria, because Washington and Damascus have no diplomatic relations — was able to arrange for its ambassador to visit Shweikani in prison.

Since then, absolutely nothing was known about her fate. Last month, though, the Syrian government released its civil registry, which tracks births and deaths, and it included Shweikani, who reportedly died on Dec. 28, 2016.

Late last month, in a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing, James Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for Syria Engagement, confirmed Shweikani’s death, and that it happened while she was in Syrian government custody.

The timing of the Czech ambassador’s visit, and Shweikani’s death soon thereafter, doesn’t prove that she was killed because she was an American. But it does demand a much deeper investigation into what happened to her, whether or not other Americans are in custody or have been killed, and what the Trump administration plans to do about it.

“I understand there are some classified details, but it is disappointing that Ambassador Jeffrey was unable to say more on behalf of the administration about what happened to Layla and what the repercussions will be when he testified before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee. ... I’m still waiting on an answer,” Kinzinger told me.

Kinzinger says there’s a “high possibility” that other Americans remain in Syrian regime custody.

Reporter Austin Tice, for example, went missing in Syria more than six years ago and is believed to still be alive. A lawsuit filed by the family of acclaimed correspondent Marie Colvin in a U.S. court makes the case that she was tracked down and murdered by the Assad regime.

“Bashar al-Assad’s brutality knows no bounds, and now American citizens are his victims,” said Lina Murad, president of Americans for a Free Syria. “Layla Shweikani was a humanitarian whose work helping displaced persons in Syria was admirable, but Assad and his security forces saw fit to detain, torture, and execute her. Her tragic and unjust death is a wake-up call for Americans and the U.S. government. Assad must no longer be able to carryUnless we begin to demand answers for the detention and death of Americans around the world, I don’t see any incentive for Assad or other thugs to stop targeting our citizens.

Every day more innocent people die in Syria. Some say it’s hard to understand the scope of that kind of human carnage. But when an individual who has lived most of her life enjoying the relative peace and prosperity of the United States is killed because she chose to go help the victims of a faraway war, don’t we owe it to her to acknowledge her sacrifice — and to at least tell the story of how she lived? out his atrocities with impunity.”

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey said Kurdish militants east of the Euphrates in Syria “will be buried in their ditches when the time comes”, after President Donald Trump began what will be a total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria.

Trump’s decision to pull out completely was confirmed by U.S. officials and is expected in the coming months. The move stunned U.S. lawmakers and allies and upends American policy in the Middle East. For NATO ally Turkey, however, the news is likely to be welcome.

The two countries have long had their relations strained by differences over Syria, where the United States has backed the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Islamic State. Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

“Now we have Manbij and the east of the Euphrates in front of us. We are working intensively on this subject,” state-owned Anadolu news agency on Thursday reported Defence Minister Hulusi Akar as saying during a visit to a Qatari-Turkish joint military base in Doha.

“Right now it is being said that some ditches, tunnels were dug in Manbij and to the east of the Euphrates. They can dig tunnels or ditches if they want, they can go underground if they want, when the time and place comes they will buried in the ditches they dug. No one should doubt this.”

It was not clear when Akar was speaking.

President Tayyip Erdogan said this week that Turkey may start a new military operation in Syria at any moment, touting support from Trump even though the Pentagon had issued a stern warning to Ankara.

The Pentagon had said that unilateral military action by any party in northeast Syria, where U.S. forces operate, would be unacceptable.

Turkey has already intervened to sweep YPG and Islamic State fighters from territory west of the Euphrates over the past two years. It has not gone east of the river, partly to avoid direct confrontation with U.S. forces.

Thousands of Iranians packed the mausoleum of the Islamic republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on Friday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the revolution that overthrew a centuries-old dynasty.

Ceremonies for the 1979 revolution were launched at 9:33 am (0603 GMT), the exact time that Khomeini returned to Iran after 14 years in exile and his plane touched down at Tehran airport.

As an army band played revolutionary anthems, the huge hall of the mausoleum was filled with people from all walks of life, among them schoolchildren dressed in the red, white and green of the Iranian flag.

Young girls clad in black chador or hijab Islamic attire had slogans on their hand reading, "My life for the leader" or "Long live Iran."

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the influential experts assembly which appoints Iran's supreme leader, delivered a keynote speech rebuking political factions seeking better ties with Washington.

"Curses on the wrong school of thought that thinks we can't run the country unless America helps us," he said, shaking a raised left hand.

"America's power is on the decline, we should not be afraid of America," Jannati said as the crowd shouted slogans such as "Death to America" and "Death to Israel".

On February 1 each year, the "Dahe-ye Fajr" (10 days of Dawn) celebrations start in Iran to mark the anniversary of Khomeini's return after the pro-Western shah fled Iran following widespread demonstrations.

The celebrations culminate on 11 February (22 Bahman, in the Persian calendar) which marks the fall of 2,500 years of monarchy in Iran.

- 'Whole world tried to destroy it' -

For the 40th anniversary, decorative lights and posters have been put up in main streets in Tehran and new murals of "martyrs" painted on walls.

ISNA news agency posted a video of ships blasting their horns in celebration in the Gulf port of Bandar Abbas, southern Iran.

Two arms and military equipment fairs have opened in the capital, showcasing the weaponry developed and manufactured in Iran over the past four decades, especially its prized ballistic missiles.

From the very start, the Islamic republic faced challenges from communist former anti-shah allies as well as from separatist minorities in border regions of Iran.

In September 1980, Saddam Hussein's Iraq launched a war that dragged on for eight years.

And the November 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran and hostage-taking of its staff for more than 400 days triggered the still ongoing hostility between the two countries.

Iran's economy has nosedived since Washington reinstated sanctions after US President Donald Trump last May withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.

But defiance rang out at the mausoleum. "With the leadership we are alive and we will endure," the choir chanted.

Forty years have passed since the revolution and throughout these 40 years the whole world tried to destroy it... but they were unsuccessful" said Jannati.

"Even now look what they are trying to do to destroy (the revolution)... This accursed America will do anything it can to defeat Islam," he said.

"The people are ready to sacrifice their lives, let alone their livelihoods, but they will not give up their religion."