[psergeant]

Feels like they may be taking a leaf out of the Russo-Skripal handbook here, and making barely any effort to cover their tracks as a show of brazeness to other potential defectors/dissidents. Guessing some fallen-from-favour minor Saud is going to take the fall to keep things smooth between the two countries.

[arkitaip]

It was incredibly stupid of them to commit the murder at the embassy. It totally removes plausible deniability and draws unnecessary attention to their embassy. They knew his schedule and could have performed the assassination shortly before or after the embassy visit and still be able to intimidate their enemies.

Another thing Khashoggi's murder highlights: it's becoming increasingly difficult for intelligence services to hide the identifies and activities of their operatives. Competent researchers can much more easily map them out by accessing social media, CCTV data, public government databases and the occasional leak.

[lostlogin]

There are obvious examples of this and you may be entirely correct, but does this apply to countries that aren’t dictatorships or similar? Israel, China, USA, Britain, France, Germany, Italy et al seem to be doing ok at keeping their dirty work quiet, or am I just missing the news? It seems unlikely that they all have clean hands.

[psergeant]

I think killing a political dissident in another country that’s not actively at war is considered a bit beyond the pale by most democracies, doubly so if you’re putatively on good terms with them.

Mossad, alternatively: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-... — although the victim was far from either a dissident or turncoat.

[lostlogin]

Extraordinary renditions come to mind. While murder wasn’t the primary aim, it happened. That involved numerous democracies.

[psergeant]

While I’m sure there are occasional counter examples, weren’t these largely from either war zones or with the cooperation of the host country?

[lostlogin]

Yes - I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.

[psergeant]

I guess my point is that maybe they wanted the “unnecessary attention”