The premeditated and coldblooded murder of Mr. Khashoggi by the Saudis has striking parallels with the premeditated and coldblooded murder of the Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti by Fascist thugs operating on the orders of Benito Mussolini.

On the afternoon of June 10, 1924, Mr. Matteotti was walking in Rome when a group of Fascists grabbed him and stuffed him into a waiting car. Two months later, his decomposed body was found about 12 miles away.

Several days before his abduction, Mr. Matteotti had delivered an impassioned speech denouncing widespread fraud and violence committed by the Fascists during national elections two months earlier. He was scheduled to give another speech when Parliament reopened the day after his disappearance.

Mussolini was also saved by the complicity of foreign allies and international public opinion to accept the implausible explanation that Mr. Matteotti’s killers were Fascist hotheads who had acted on the spur of the moment, to “teach him a lesson,” and killed him accidentally.