good move for you. breaking news on arch international saudi arabia claims that a journalist who went missing in istanbul more than two weeks ago died in a fight in the saudi consulate. the russian woman is charged in the u.s. for allegedly trying to meddle in the upcoming midterm elections for social media. and funerals are held in crimea for some of the twenty people shot and killed by a student at a technical college survivors recall that tragic day yesterday several close of

them live on the scene. the bones of the. bali. direct from our studios in moscow this is r t international i'm sean thomas certainly glad to have you with us and we start with breaking news this hour saudi arabia claims that a journalist who went missing two and a half weeks ago in turkey died in a fight inside the consulate in istanbul the saudi state prosecutor made a statement on state t.v. artie's dan cohen reports. saudis have confirmed that. the saudi national and washington post columnist who disappeared on october second is dead they say an argument turned into a quote fistfight led to his death the came also from

a tweet from the saudi foreign ministry king solomon has fired five top officials and arrested eighteen people among those fired to our crown prince mohammed bin solomon's advisor saudi to any and deputy intel intelligence chief major general ahmed allah siri they're being investigated about the case the white white house press secretary sara sanders has released a statement saying these are the exact words the united states acknowledges the announcement from the kingdom of saudi arabia that its investigation into the fate of gemma hall shoji is progressing and that it has taken action against the suspects it has identified thus far we will continue to closely follow the international investigations so the saudi version that we are hearing tonight about a fistfight that led to his death is very different from what the turks have been

leaking through the international press turkish intelligence have been claiming that a saudi hit team of fifteen people killed within just a matter of minutes after hall shoji arrived at the saudi embassy in istanbul they claim to have video and audio recording showing the saudi team listening to music through headphones as they cut fingers off beheaded him and dismembered his body with a bone saw president trump has called on the turkey to release the audio and video if it exists this is led to unprecedented scrutiny of saudi arabia and its relationship with the trumpet ministration. president trump had been saying previously that it was probably dead but he didn't have confirmation he's also said he doesn't want the case to interfere with large armed deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars and that he didn't want u.s.

companies like lockheed martin boeing and raytheon to suffer as a result much of the outrage has been specifically directed at the crown prince of saudi arabia mohamed bin solemn on we've seen protests outside the white house here in washington and democrats are seizing on the trumpet administration's relationship with saudi arabia as midterm elections near. we're joined live now by anti-war activist richard becker richard thanks for being with us as we kind of sort through this whole mess is what i would say. necessarily rabia says he jamal khashoggi stepped into the saudi consulate on october the second to get documents and then got into a fight and died when i had a chance to talk about this briefly during the sound check. how does this explanation add up to you. well it doesn't add up at all i mean as

someone remarked to me who are the consul and mike tyson i mean the idea that he was killed in a fistfight and then his body was disappeared and the was a group of fifteen people who came directly from saudi arabia that they participated in this apparently they were in the fistfight and then they left the same day apparently with the body but this makes no sense i mean really makes no sense at all and the idea that this didn't come the order did not come from the top makes no sense either that if anyone in saudi arabia in the intelligence or military services and all fifteen of those who came to the consulate and identified as such a very of them were to do such a thing with out the direction. oh mom had been so much on in the king they would be killed they would be tortured and executed themselves so this makes no sense at all and the story is a story meant i think for donald trump that he can say oh you know well there's

this there's there's the explanation and now we can go on with our money grubbing relationship with saudi arabia so i mean if we look at the bigger picture this incident happened a two and a half weeks ago and there's been global outcry why has it taken the saudis so long to admit that. she is actually dead. well he went into the he went into the embassy he didn't come out of the embassy or at least he didn't come out alive and in one piece and it's pretty hard to come up with a story that's going to fly that doesn't involve the reality of what happened there and now i see that in charge the deputy head of general intelligence general they're not serious he's meant to be the fall guy i think that clear they've arrested eighteen others and they are all fall guys too and this is you know this

is i think the reality here that we have to suit is that feeling the backing of trump and of the u.s. . when he overreached in this case and directed the killing of someone who was a critic in this most grotesque fashion. because the u.s. has been backing them completely in regard to the killing of thousands and thousands of people in yemen i think they felt they could get away with it and i don't think it's going to fly i know that the story will fly and i want to go back to something you touched on just a bit ago and that's about. the relations in the money that's involved as u.s. officials keep mentioning the saudis by vast quantities of u.s. weapons with hundreds of billions of dollars so if the u.s. it takes any action against saudi arabia. could it include maybe kind of cutting back on these arms deals. well i think that that's possible i doubt that will

happen the hundred ten billion dollar deal is one that is over many years and the parts of it are very vague and so forth but what's not and what is absolutely clear is that saudi arabia really came into being a nine hundred thirty two with the support of the u.s. and probably couldn't otherwise the the arabian. families. the name really means that we have one royal family that never had elections they've been protected there's no democratic race in the country whatsoever but they've been protected because they have supplied so much oil and so much wealth to the united states and trouble a couple months a few months ago i think was in april when muhammad was a man was in the white house he made a very embarrassing to the saudis presentation saying it's a very very wealthy country and they're sharing their wealth with us i want to countries share their wealth with another country except you know it's

a payoff it's a payoff for the protection that the u.s. has has provided to saudi arabia and to the to the to the monarchy for all these years well even if there are no harsh u.s. sanctions surely the relationship with saudi arabia has to change on some level i mean we're hearing. mentions of a sea change of sort but do you think this will actually be the case. i don't know i would not i would not say that with any degree of certainty because saudi arabia has played such an important role for the united states. they are key to this so-called deal of the century the sellout of the palestinians without the palestinians even being able to participate in the negotiations they played a highly reactionary role in the whole region and including inside saudi arabia itself and the gulf monarchies in general i really are a retrograde and extremely retrograde group but the united states is highly

dependent and those are the friends as they're defined in u.s. foreign policy and it's quite a group of friends and i don't think that the u.s. is going to move that far away from saudi arabia there may it may be that we're not anywhere near the end of this story although we do see that the king instead of disciplining mohammed when someone in an. grown pretty as a point that it would be the head of the investigation. interesting investigating you his possibly his own crimes there richard becker i'm sure we could talk about this for hours i'm sure as this unfolds we'll have more opportunities to do so thanks for being with us here and art international. all right turkey claims to have a recording that shows. was murdered earlier president trump denied that his secretary of state might bump a zero was given that recording artist. takes a closer look at the case. a quick look at the calendar back here was when

jamal khashoggi was last seen alive days past and only that was the point when the us president had this response to the question is mr her dead it certainly looks that way to me it's very sad certainly but we're waiting for the results. about three different investigations and we should be able to get to the bottom fairly soon but i have to be very severe have it. but we'll see what happens here we are that rather obvious one for many took sixteen days even though a crystal ball wasn't exactly needed to know something atrocious had likely happened to the journalist but what exactly he calls for arab nations to allow freedom of the press freedom for which he apparently died fighting a turkish official tells c.n.n.

that his body was cut into pieces after his death whether the alleged killers dismembered body here and spread it around the country plenty of t.v. attention and speculation zero public comments from this man for two and a half weeks just for your information jeff bezos own the newspaper mr hashad you wrote for the washington post believe it or not he's had nothing to say on the probable death of his employee for now maybe he just didn't want to there's been a suspicious silence from a number of important people who you'd usually expect to roar when a journalist goes missing for so long or not that suspicious when the fingers are being pointed at someone as special as those in charge of saudi arabia so those who do speak out sound rather well hear for yourself i just want to

cool. the temper of those who screaming for the saudis look these people or allies there's clearly a downside here there's clearly an upside and i thought it was worth investing a little hope in the upside i don't think on this issue that we've had to pull sanctions i just think it's a mistake we've been an arms dealer with everybody all of the pieces of this one quarter of the one hundred ninety billion dollars is huge and it will mean a lot of jobs it will be you know a lot of money coming to our coffers let's leave america where the lived and worked side for a bit the e.u. must have a few strong words on journalist abuse or a likely murder our position. on this but you seem to the saudis are still closer to release the system so easy to use your freedom and.

that's it but bear in mind that some big leaders haven't said a thing on the mystery it seems riyadh would have to be renamed to let's say moscow to really turn into one big evil attention grabber with donald trump saying i have to be very severe have it bad. but we'll see what happens tide could have turned but just for contrast think of all the cases when russia's had a telling off whatever's wrong with the world the rebuke comes momentarily that someone say two and a half weeks. the u.s. justice department has filed criminal charges against a russian national for allegedly trying to meddle in the upcoming midterm elections the russian embassy in washington says the claims are unfounded ortiz came up and has more. the u.s. department of justice has indicted a woman who is forty four years old an accountant living in st petersburg now she

is the first person to be indicted and it is alleged that she was meddling in the upcoming midterm congressional elections in the united states she's being charged by the u.s. department of justice with conspiracy to defraud the united states it's alleged that she had millions of dollars invested into social media activity that was intended to quote so division and discord in the u.s. political system in july we heard from christopher ray he's the director of the f.b.i. and he says that no evidence of such a plot by russia actually had been discovered so far we haven't yet seen an effort to target specific election infrastructure at this point it's not alleged that any voting machines were targeted it's not alleged that any voter registration records or any election infrastructure was in any way targeted now this comes in the aftermath of twitter releasing a collection of tweets it says came from russian trolls and quite

a large number of tweets and the report itself actually admits that these tweets their influence was rather negligible they really didn't have much of an impact on the u.s. election in two thousand and sixteen strangely enough you know these tweets are not only directed against hillary clinton but also directed against donald trump and in fact they were more effective when they were targeting trump so the allegation that there was some sort of russian conspiracy to get donald trump in the white house doesn't exactly add up if that were the case why would these russian bots and trolls be working to hurt donald trump rather than help him and why would they be working for the benefit of hillary clinton the other point it's raised is it's alleged that these these tweets are associated with the internet research agency which is connected to a businessman who said to be connected to vladimir putin the russian president also alleged that this woman in question works with this businessman. and he is connected with latimer putin it's quite a stretch it's not clearly established how the russian government is responsible

for the activities of a private company the questions still remain they're alleging that she is friends with this man who owns the internet research agency and then he is friends with the russian president it's kind of a long chain of separation that they're making it's also important to note that we've heard donald trump speak up and says that the woman in question has absolutely nothing to do with his campaign she has been named in previous indictments from the u.s. department of justice in the bob muller investigation regarding the twenty sixteen election she was named however at this point we're now seeing her named and charged in connection to alleged meddling in the twenty eight thousand elections which have not yet taken place which are coming up in november. where we can now bring in drow bruno into the conversation senior analyst at lombardi letter thanks for being with us here in our two international. so it russian accountant in st petersburg is

being accused of meddling in the u.s. election using social media accounts just on the surface what you make of this case . well i have to start from my personal belief in the whole russia gate best occasion two thousand and sixteen and the one that's coming up now the two thousand and eighteen midterms i found of i found the entire story surreal like something out of one thousand nine hundred four the the soul charges alone sawing this court i'm not sure these charges exist in any criminal court. because if that were the case then what about journalists operating anywhere writing articles critical of one political figure or a particular political action or a law would that be also so in this court so that's where i'm coming from so to me the the whole affair sounds all right it is already surreal to begin with the

second part is they always seem to charge russians who are not their lead yelena yes was keen i believe is the name of the. mountain in st petersburg is one has been charged but so have russian diplomats who are now in russia so the people who will never be presumably never appear before a u.s. court so you bring up the idea that like in terms of a criminal charge there's no code that actually has a post apparently relate to issues including gun control gay rights and the charlottesville riots so what could be wrong with writing about such things i mean we do that all the time how does this constitute as meddling. well exactly that's how i mentioned before what if a journalist in the united states for the europe times of the washington post were writing about these very issues perhaps from an untraditional angle would that be

sawing this cord or would that be some kind of criminal activity the the russia gate investigation is now bordering on challenging freedom of speech and the rights to to read the information i mean if i there are in the united states as an absolute. almost religious like belief in the freedom of speech and freedom of the press so the idea that you can't write things or say things even if it's a campaign. and a paid one. i don't think there is a any legal precedent or illegal precedent for such or. for such a practice and one of the taking the other side the investigators are arguing that these social posts are actually sowing discord with an american society and that they undermine faith in our democratic institutions that support their. can social

media posts really do that do they have that power. well i'm not going to deny that social media posts have. the power to move. groups to move protests certainly we've seen for example in the arab spring in the egypt in particular. twitter and other social media accounts mobilized support mobilize people under street and three or square but there was an actual physical movement there were the tweets alone did not were simply to get people out and protest now if the tweets in question were mobilizing people to protest against the government in mass in millions or hundreds of thousands in many cities then i think a case might be made for foreign influence however we did not see that the

charlottesville. riots and the gun control issues are strictly very domestic american issues that have rooted in domestic american problems and have been for decades. not months or so or weeks so. i think the discourse thing is now unfortunately we have an election coming up and we're going to have a really resumption of this topic it seemed to have died as a little bit but i expect we're going to see a lot more of it all right very interesting to hear thoughts i'm sure as this all plays out we're going to both be watching this very closely alexandra byrne our senior analyst at lombardi letter thanks for being with us. thank you. all right switching gears now three days of mourning are being held in crimea for the victims of wednesday's college massacre a student killed twenty people before turning the gun on himself our correspondent what i've got to have is they're encouraged where a public ceremony for the victims has been held thousands and thousands of locals

of turned up for this ceremony a final chance to say goodbye farewell to all those whose lives were cut short in this horrific massacre and just the stress most of the victims were teenagers aged sixteen to nineteen making their last so much more cute so much more painful as a lot of grief here people as well as top officials the governor to offer words of support to the families understand one bullet that felt so aggrieved so poorly that she needed medical attention a little earlier but the governor and others wish them strength to deal with this tragic loss nevertheless hoops and prayers here with those still in hospitals many people fighting for their lives in critical condition on life support battling

severe injuries as i reported earlier there was nothing spontaneous about this massacre it was cold calculated and preplanned. but. it was here on the thirteenth of october that vladislav surkov the suspected shooter begad to turn his platen for mass murder into reality here we should have means with that is that the the. game you know you can actually. hear you but i will relate to put on of them. the navy ship with one hundred and fifty shotgun shells were only for the second part of his atrocity. four days later he waited until his mother left this house dressed in black and carrying

a bag of ammo rusnak of left for college on the other side of town. first he detonated an improvised explosive device. to put up with a second on us i'm still feeling the bomb filled as it was with lethal shrapnel was set and treated in the cafeteria on the full us through exactly at lunchtime when it would be packed with faculty and students. these was no crime of passion this was planned with cold calculation given the efforts needed to learn how to and to actually build a bomb with a time a detonator the aim was clear to kill and maim as many as possible as quickly as possible in the ensuing chaos. as panic and

confusion took hold the gunman began his killing spree he started on the second floor making his way downstairs to the devastated cafeteria killing anyone he met stuff with students. few. more shots more victims she was his unit if you. install tional symbol i mean you know but they don't do it until but there most of them teenagers they try to run to hide they did desperate things such. as an eula. the mushy ideas now you. go. on and his rampage last that just fifteen minutes before he killed himself in the library on the second floor fifteen minutes but his victims are in the hundreds for every child left dead

a family was torn apart for every teacher killed generations of graduates left. their friends their teachers neighbors and countryman all shocked and. since the early hours of the morning they've come here bringing more and more and more flowers candles toys she is mourning a loss of tragedy that they can scarce comprehend what's worse the tragedy apparently without cause or reason. all right one palestinian official and several other people have been injured during a protest in the west bank israeli officers were seen using force against the demonstrators zero zero zero zero zero. zero

zero. locals were posing plans to demolish their village on fifty two families have rejected an offer to relocate to another area israel says the village was built illegally and are dangerously close to a highway. meanwhile on the israel gaza border one hundred fifteen palestinians including twenty five children were injured in the latest riots of this according to the palestinian health ministry the crowds have been gathering at the border fence every friday since march demanding the right to to reclaim ancestral lands from israel protesters place burning tires along the frontier and threw rocks at israeli soldiers who fought back with life fire since the unrest began seven months ago more than two hundred palestinians have been killed by israeli soldier. there's no good journalist. al-sayed in gaza with the latest. today marks the thirtieth friday in the great march every terry as we can see hundreds of palestinian protesters have gathered here as usual to protest today palestinian

protesters have started burning tires in an attempt to block the vision on the israeli snipers division in front of the israeli forces are these really snipers is almost totally blocked but yet they are firing live ammunition and gas canisters at the palestinian protesters gathering there as we can see the israeli forces are firing gas canisters on the palestinian protesters. there are numbers of injuries that have been taken by paramedics to the ambulances as you can see in the area it's full of protesters from all sectors men women and children. we have paramedics we have a lot of press we have also palestinian volunteers who have come here in order to save the other protesters we have seven injuries four shot for life shooting until now and people are chalking because of old

a gas that has been try your done then you have another injury i know there injury . in the eye. another injury in the i. mean. as you can see there are still a number of injuries that are coming in every now and then. i mean while the israeli military says it was forced to respond on friday after terrorists in gaza launched several insincerity balloons into israel. a caravan of at least of three thousand of migrants has attempted to breach of the border from guatemala to mexico on their way to the united states these are the latest pictures from the guatemalan side of a. border many of the migrants managed to breach the fence and were arrested by mexican police caravan started out from honduras last week and the migrants say that they are fleeing poverty and insecurity in their own countries u.s. president has taken a harsh stance on.