Saudi Arabia backs away from earlier claim Jamal Khashoggi’s death followed heated brawl
Saudi Arabia backs away from an earlier assertion Jamal Khashoggi’s death followed a heated brawl as his family flee the Gulf kingdom.
Saudi Arabia said information shared by Turkey indicates the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated, as Riyadh backed away from an earlier assertion that the death followed a heated brawl.
The about-turn came just before a travel ban on Khashoggi’s family was lifted allowing them to leave the Gulf kingdom and head to the United States.
Khashoggi, a government critic, was killed inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2. Since then, Saudi Arabia has faced mounting international pressure to offer a credible narrative of what happened amid suspicions the operation was approved from the highest level of government.
MORE: Why Saudi Arabia despised Jamal Khashoggi
Saudi Arabia’s Attorney-General in an official statement said that information gathered from Turkey as part of a continuing investigation “indicates that the suspects in that incident had done their act with a prior intention.”
The statement came a day after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly addressed the issue for the first time, saying the perpetrators of the “hideous incident” would be brought to justice, and pledging full cooperation with Turkish authorities.
Since Khashoggi first disappeared, the official Saudi version of events has changed. The Saudi government initially claimed the journalist had left the consulate, dismissing accusations of wrongdoing as baseless. Last week, it said Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate by “rogue operatives” but claimed his death was unintentional, the result of a heated argument that turned into a brawl. That explanation had drawn widespread scepticism.
The Saudi conclusion that Khashoggi’s death was most likely premeditated aligns the kingdom’s narrative more closely with that of Turkish authorities, who say Khashoggi’s killing was deliberate. They say he was drugged, killed and dismembered shortly after he entered the consulate.
The eldest son of the murdered Saudi journalist, Salah, and his family have left the Gulf kingdom after the government lifted a travel ban, Human Rights Watch said this morning.
“Salah and his family are on a plane to (Washington) DC now,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the rights watchdog’s executive director for the Middle East and North Africa, said, citing a family friend.
There was no immediate comment from Saudi officials, but Ms Whitson said that they were apparently allowed to leave after a travel ban on Salah was lifted. Salah, a dual US-Saudi citizen, will be joined in the United States by his other siblings who are based there, friends of the family say.
“Jamal’s family needs a place to be together where they feel safe to mourn their beloved one,” said Randa Slim, director of conflict resolution at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this week publicly challenged the Saudi explanation that Khashoggi died in a brawl, and called for “all the responsible people, from the lowest rank to the highest” to be held accountable.
Turkish investigators were denied access to the Saudi consulate to conduct another search of the premises, this time focused on a well, in which they suspect body parts of Khashoggi may have been disposed, Turkish state media reported. Instead, investigators have collected a water sample from the sewage system connected to the consulate.
Adding to the pressure on the kingdom, US President Trump in an interview with The Wall Street Journal said he didn’t rule out Prince Mohammed’s possible involvement in the operation. “He’s running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him,” he said Tuesday.
Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel this week travelled to Turkey to gather evidence on the circumstances that led to Khashoggi’s death. The Washington Post reported that Ms Haspel listened to an audio recording that purportedly captures the death of the journalist, a key piece of evidence that supports Turkey’s claim that his killing was premeditated. She was expected to return to Washington by Thursday.
The killing of Khashoggi and the global backlash that followed has confronted Washington with the dilemma of what action to take against the kingdom without jeopardising an alliance that is at the heart of its Middle East strategy.
The State Department has already imposed travel restrictions on 21 unnamed Saudi government officials implicated in the journalist’s death. More penalties could follow, including financial sanctions aimed at human-rights violators, a possibility raised by US politicians.
Saudi Arabia so far has detained 18 people in connection to Khashoggi’s death. Two senior officials close to Prince Mohammed have lost their jobs. But the Saudi government has strongly denied the crown prince was aware of the operation targeting the journalist, and there is no indication he will suffer direct repercussions because of it.
The Saudi monarch, King Salman, tasked his 33-year old son to overhaul the country’s intelligence agency — one of the steps the Saudi government has taken in response to the Khashoggi crisis. The new intelligence committee headed by Prince Mohammed met for the first time Thursday.
With Sune Rasmussen
Wall Street Journal
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