The crown prince of Saudi Arabia likely approved an operation to kill or capture a US-based journalist inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to a recently declassified US intelligence report released on Friday that could increase pressure on the Biden administration to hold the kingdom responsible for a murder. that sparked bipartisan and international outrage.
The central conclusion of the report was widely expected given that intelligence officials were said to have reached it shortly after the brutal October 2, 2018 assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s authoritarian consolidation of power.
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (AP Photo)
Still, given that the finding had not been officially released until now, the public assignment of responsibility amounted to an extraordinary reprimand from the ambitious 35-year-old crown prince and was likely to set the tone for the new administration’s relationship with a country that President Joe. Biden has criticized but that the White House also considers in some contexts as a strategic partner.
The report came a day after a later than usual courtesy call from Biden to Saudi King Salman, although a summary of the conversation at the White House did not mention the murder and said instead that the men had discussed the association of long standing of the countries. The kingdom’s state-run Saudi Press Agency also did not mention the Khashoggi assassination in its report on the call, instead focusing on regional issues such as Iran and the ongoing war in Yemen.
Khashoggi had visited the Saudi consulate in Turkey with the intention of collecting the necessary documents for his wedding. Once inside, he was killed by more than a dozen Saudi intelligence and security officials and others who had gathered before his arrival.
Surveillance cameras had tracked his route and those of his suspected killers in Istanbul in the hours leading up to his murder.
A Turkish bug planted in the consulate reportedly captured the sound of a forensic saw, operated by a Saudi colonel who was also a forensic expert, dismembering Khashoggi’s body an hour after he entered the building. The whereabouts of his remains are unknown.
The prince said in 2019 that he took “full responsibility” for the murder, as it occurred under his command, but denied ordering it. Saudi officials have said that Khashoggi’s assassination was the work of rogue Saudi intelligence and security officials. Saudi Arabian courts announced last year that they had sentenced eight Saudi nationals to prison for Khashoggi’s murder. They were not identified.
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