US President Donald Trump, on Wednesday, 24 October, said that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, “bore ultimate responsibility” for the operation which led to the murder of The Washington Post correspondent Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump’s statement, published by The Washington Post, and quoted by Reuters, came a few hours before the Crown Prince issued a public statement at a business conference, strongly condemning Khashoggi’s murder, calling it a “heinous crime”.
Earlier, an adviser to Turkey’s president, Tayyip Erdogan, had said that Prince Mohammed had “blood on his hands” over Khashoggi, one of the few people to directly call out the Prince, in connection with the murder.
Trump had told the Post that although he wanted to believe the prince when he claimed that lower level officials were to blame for Khashoggi’s killing at the Saudi consulate, he also believed that the “responsibility” lay “higher up”, Reuters said.
Well, the prince is running things over there more so at this stage. He’s running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him.Donald Trump, as reported by Reuters
Saudi Arabia had claimed Khashoggi, a writer for The Washington Post who wrote critically about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, died accidentally in a brawl at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on 2 October.
But Turkish officials say a 15-men team tortured, killed and dismembered the writer and say Saudi officials had planned the killing for days.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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