Dubai - A complex man of contradictions, journalist Jamal Khashoggi went from being a Saudi royal family insider to a self-imposed exile, who was killed inside Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Khashoggi came from a prominent Saudi family with Turkish origins. His grandfather, Mohammed Khashoggi, was the personal doctor of Saudi Arabia's founder, King Abdul Aziz Al Saud.
A friend of the young Osama bin Laden, a Muslim Brotherhood sympathiser, an aide to the Saudi royal family, a critic and a liberal - such conflicting descriptions were all ascribed to Khashoggi.
Born in the Saudi holy city of Medina on October 13, 1958, Khashoggi spent his youth studying Islamic ideology and embraced liberal ideas.
After graduating from Indiana State University in 1982, he began working for Saudi newspapers, including the Saudi Gazette and Al Sharq Al Awsat.
Sent to cover the conflict in Afghanistan, Khashoggi sympathised with the mujahedeen in the 1980s war against the Soviet occupation.
He was known to have been drawn to the Brotherhood's policies seeking to erase the remnants of Western colonialism from the Arab world.
It was this shared vision that brought him closer to Bin Laden, who went on to found Al Qaeda, which carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Khashoggi resigned as editor-in-chief of the Saudi daily Al Watan in 2003 after serving just 54 days.
Over the years, he maintained ambiguous ties with Saudi authorities, having held advisory positions in Riyadh and Washington, including to Prince Turki Al Faisal, who ran Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency for more than 20 years.
When Faisal was appointed ambassador to Washington in 2005, Khashoggi went with him.
In 2007, Khashoggi returned to Al Watan newspaper, lasting almost three years before being fired for "his editorial style," according to his website.
He became close to Saudi billionaire Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, and together they launched in Manama a 24-hour news station, Al Arab. Bahrain shut the station down in 2015.
