Khashoggi confidant Omar Abdulaziz: 'I’m worried about the safety of the people of Saudi Arabia'

Not long before he was murdered, the journalist Jamal Khashoggi told his young friend Omar Abdulaziz two things that have subsequently never been far from his thoughts. The first was: “Never forget, your words matter.” And the second: “Be careful, this kind of work might get you killed.”

Omar Abdulaziz, 29, lives in exile in Montreal, Canada, where he has been, before and after Khashoggi’s death, among the most vocal critics of the Saudi regime that killed his friend. His words do matter – his tweets have been viewed nearly a billion times in the past year; he has an almost daily YouTube programme that has clocked up 45m views. And he is left in no doubt of their potential consequence: death threats are routine; both of his younger brothers and dozens of his friends have been arrested and imprisoned in Saudi Arabia in failed attempts to silence him.

Much of this story is set out in the film The Dissident, made by documentary director Bryan Fogel – who won an Oscar for his 2017 movie , which exposed the full story of the scandal of state-sponsored Russian doping in athletics. , no less incendiary, lays bare in horrific detail all that is known of the death of Khashoggi, the journalist who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where, on the afternoon of 2 October, 2018, he had gone to pick up papers that would allow him to divorce and remarry.