(GNB- Desk): Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has rejected a report by US intelligence agencies released on Friday that assigns accountability to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia completely rejects the negative, false and unacceptable assessment in the report pertaining to the Kingdom’s leadership and notes that the report contained inaccurate information and conclusions,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued by the Saudi Press Agency.
U.S. intelligence report released on Friday confirms that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation to capture or kill a US based journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. His body has never been recovered.
“This was an abhorrent crime and a flagrant violation of the Kingdom’s laws and values,” the ministry statement said.
“This crime was committed by a group of individuals that have transgressed all pertinent regulations and authorities of the agencies where they were employed,” the statement said.
“The concerned individuals were convicted and sentenced by the courts in the kingdom and these sentences were welcomed by the family of Jamal Khashoggi.”
Khashoggi, 59, was a Saudi citizen living in Northern Virginia and writing columns for The Washington Post that were often critical of the Saudi monarchy. Khashoggi was once an adviser to the Saudi government and close to the royal family, but fell out of favor and went into self-imposed exile in the US in 2017. From there, he wrote a monthly column in the Washington Post in which he criticised the policies of Prince Mohammed.
He was killed during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. His body was dismembered and his remains have never been found, and a United Nations report released in 2019 said the murder had been carefully planned.
Saudi Arabia initially denied knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi. But in the face of intense international pressure, the kingdom admitted that Khashoggi was killed in a “rogue” extradition operation gone wrong, but it denied any involvement by the crown prince. Five men given the death penalty for the murder had their sentences commuted to 20 years in jail after being forgiven by Khashoggi’s family.
In early 2019, Congress passed a law giving the Trump administration 30 days to release an unclassified version of the Director of National Intelligence’s report providing “a determination and evidence with respect to the advance knowledge and role of any current or former official of Saudi Arabia.” But that deadline passed for nearly two years, as Khashoggi’s supporters filed a federal lawsuit for the transparency that Trump refused.
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