Saudi Arabia’s prosecutor has received information from Turkish investigators suggesting the killing of government critic Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated, adding new pressure on the kingdom just as its de facto ruler courts foreign investors.
The Saudi prosecutor is continuing its interrogations of the suspects in light of the information and the findings of its preliminary investigations, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported yesterday.
The announcement came as CIA Director Gina Haspel prepared to brief US President Donald Trump following a quick trip to Turkey this week.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Bandar Algaloud / Saudi Royal Palace Handout
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Haspel was to brief Trump.
The Washington Post reported that Haspel heard an audio tape allegedly made of Khashoggi’s interrogation and killing at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
The CIA declined to comment when asked whether Haspel heard any such recording.
A Turkish official said the Post report was accurate.
Trump’s administration is facing rising pressure to act against Saudi Arabia and the president has appeared to be stepping back from giving Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman his full support.
The US has long been Saudi Arabia’s most important partner and Trump has made the kingdom the centerpiece of his efforts to isolate Iran.
After denying Khashoggi’s death for nearly three weeks, the kingdom last week said he was accidentally killed after a discussion at the consulate turned into an altercation.
However, it has not explained why his body is still missing, or how a meeting in a diplomatic compound grew violent.
Saudi Arabia has said that 18 people had been arrested in connection with the incident, and a senior intelligence official and an adviser to Prince Mohammed were removed from their jobs.
Prince Mohammed on Wednesday made his first public comments since his government admitted Khashoggi had been killed.
Speaking at an investment forum he was hosting in Riyadh, he called the killing a “heinous crime” and promised to bring the killers to justice, but offered no new information on what happened.
Striking a defiant tone, the prince told international investors that the furor would not derail the kingdom’s reform drive.
“We will prove to the world that the two governments [Saudi Arabian and Turkish] are cooperating to punish any criminal, any culprit and at the end justice will prevail,” he said to applause.
He spoke hours after Trump was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that as the de facto ruler, the crown prince bore ultimate responsibility for the operation that led to Khashoggi’s death.
Trump told the Journal in an interview that he did not think Saudi Arabian King Salman knew about the killing in advance.
Prince Mohammed yesterday presided over the first meeting of a committee to restructure the command of the general intelligence agency, the SPA said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS