On October 2, 2018, Saudi-born Washington Post Journalist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, and was never seen again.

This 59-year-old U.S. resident was on a self-imposed exile from his home country since 2017 and proceeded to Turkey to complete the paperwork for his planned marriage to his fiancée, Halice Cengiz. She waited outside too and was instructed to raise an alarm if he did not emerge from this seemingly normal visit to complete personal business, in more than four hours.

Regrettably, the alarm was raised and it wailed in the ears of humanity with resounding fear. Mr. Khashoggi has not been seen ever since and preliminary investigations thus far have revealed a gruesome, macabre and medieval execution of this fierce critic of the Saudi government.

Sadly, the disposing of enemies of the state and the fatal silencing of dissenting voices have always been a feature of human existence. This development harks back to the trepidation of the isms; Stalinism, Maoism, and McCarthyism.

This morbid feature of bad leadership is egregious wherever it appears, but the execution of Jamal Khashoggi smacks of an extra cavalier and blatant disregard for global norms and consequences. It illustrates eerie parallels to the age of totalitarianism where there was the embrace of the philosophy, no man, no problem.

What also gives this case a poignant edge of concern is the fact that this assassination occurred in a consulate. The intellectual authors could not have anticipated that such a high-profile journalist, who is aware that he is being targeted, would not have put some mechanism in place to protect himself once he entered a consulate.

This mere consideration behooved the perpetrators to desist from such gross misadventure. The fact that they were not deterred smacks of a worrisome swagger of terror that proceeds from a place of little or no consideration for ramifications.

In the face of such developments, we are starkly reminded that unchecked government teems with the potential to be a complete assault on humanity. It is for this reason, a free press, free and fair elections, an independent judiciary and freedom from fear of responsible dissenting voices are eternally necessary. George Orwell remarked that ‘we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.’