** FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 797 15 November 18 KHASHOGGI, TORTURE AND I

MY RECENT TALK ON THE ATROCIOUS KHASHOGGI MURDER. BOTH THE GOSPEL AND THE QUR'AN EXPOSE THE ASSASSINS AS TOOLS OF THE DEVIL.
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Speaking on the Khashoggi case at Abrar House on Tuesday, I quoted both Bible and Qur’an. ‘They plotted but Allah is the best of plotters’, says Sura al-Imran, while in St John’s Gospel Jesus brands his enemies as liars and murderers, like the Devil, whose children they are. Two quotations that nail the assassins responsible for the Saudi journalist’s death and their diabolical plot.

Details about Khashoggi’s murder are chilling. The killers brought with them a ‘torture toolkit, the Turkish press disclose. X-rays of the luggage carried by the Saudi death squad show a saw, syringes, scalpels, defibrillators, staple guns and long scissors… Pull the curtains tight across the ghastly peep-show of your imagination, please. Too gruesome. The wretched victim’s ordeal, his sufferings are best left alone. ‘The killers must have been on drugs’, Saudi spooks allegedly said when they heard recordings of the killing. But when you do the Devil’s bidding, what do you expect?

The secret services of many States do carry out assassinations. Self-righteous, squeaky-clean Britain has James Bond. Maybe a bit of a wish-fulfilment? Agents from Mossad, the Israeli spies, did kill a Palestinian activist from Gaza, Mahmoud al-Babhouh, in Dubai, back in 2010. The Gulf nation’s police chief wanted to demand the extradition of Mossad’s boss, as well as that of PM Netanyahu. No joy. Israel kept mum. Anyway, all Governments standardly deny accusations of extra-judicial killings. ‘We are innocent!’ the bastards swear up and down, never mind how damning the evidence. Like Saudi voices have, but even President Trump, King Salman’s greatest chum, seems to have no doubts. The culprits ‘will be severely punished for that’, he said. Insh’allah!

An aside. A tad ironical that Turkey’s President Erdogan is blowing his top over this sale affaire. Allowing that the crime has happened inside diplomatic premises on Turkish territory – I feel like asking: do the Turkish authorities, police and spooks ever kill and torture people? You don’t have to hark back to the anti-Turkish Midnight Express movie. I am thinking of the Kurds but also what happened to many members of the Gulen Movement. After the 2016 attempted military coup (real or staged by Erdogan himself to crack down on his opponents? Discuss!) many claims have been made to that effect. Having served for two years as a chaplain in Turkey, I have a pretty shrewd idea.

The plotters and planners who weaved the atrocious plot believed themselves clever. They got a Khashoggi’s lookalike, wearing the clothes the journalist wore when he entered the Saudi consulate, to walk out and stroll along to a mosque for prayers. The idea being the plotters could claim, as they initially did, that their victim had emerged out of the premises safe and sound. They plotted but they should have heeded the warning of their holy book: ‘Allah is the best of plotters’. Also, like a homely Italian proverb cautions: ‘La farina del diavolo va sempre in crusca’. Hard to translate but you dig the word ‘diavolo’? It’s the clue.

Is torture always and necessarily intrinsically wrong? International law, conventions and treaties say so and those responsible should be prosecuted. What constitutes torture is a matter of definition, though. Some States hide behind euphemisms like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and the US consider waterboarding and ‘slamming’ as not torture. The nature of the blood-curdling kit carried by the Saudi death squad, however, is all too transparent. Using those instruments on a human being would be a hellish thing. Hope that those who tormented Khashoggi with them should suffer for it in this world and the next.

Philosophically it is not impossible to conceive of situations when some form of harsh physical punishment could be justified. Consider this scenario: a hidden atomic or chemical or bacteriological device will shortly go off. The terrorist has been arrested but won’t talk. Would it be morally wrong to threaten to pull out his nails if he doesn’t tell? And to actually do it, one mail by one nail, if he persists? OK, they say anyone will confess to anything under torture, so it is no good. The reply is statements so made can be verified. Say the terrorist gives a location for the bomb. The cops find that’s a lie. Nothing there. Well, you can then start again. Not only the fingernails but the toenails too…Am I being a sadist? No, just doing philosophy. (Ho! Ho!) A mere thought experiment. What would be wrong would be to extrapolate from extreme, theoretical, one-off cases to a general practice. Just because there are hypothetical circumstances in which torture might be inescapable to save
many lives, it does not follow that torture should become a legitimate penal punishment for all kinds of minor crimes, such as jay-walking or nicking beer cans from Tesco. So, relax!

I ought to reveal that, as a young journalist in Italy once, I myself felt a likely target for mafia assassination and, who knows, torture. After I wrote reports about the murderous Calabria criminal society, la Ndrangheta, for the weekly ‘Calabria Oggi’ I got several dark warnings. Mercifully the Lord looked after me: I am still here to tell the tale.

Jesus, according to St John (8:44), does not pull any punches. He tells his foes: ‘You are of you father, the Devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth…He is a liar and the father of lies.’ I repeatedly quoted these sacred words to my audience during the Abrar lecture, as well as the Qur’anic passage about the foolishness of all mischief-plotters. So, despite hideous crimes like the Khashoggi killing, let us be of good cheer: God is in charge. The Devil and his minions will not have the last word.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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