The critical journalist of power was assassinated in Istanbul, in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, in 2018.
Le Monde with AFP
Riyadh said on Saturday that the assassination of critical journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a “tragedy” on which it was useless to epilog, after the President of the United States, Joe Biden, spoke about him during his Visit in the Gulf Monarchy.
Criticism of power after being close to it, Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in Istanbul, in the Saudi Arabia Consulate in Turkey in 2018. The American intelligence services pointed the responsibility of the Crown Prince, Mohammed Ben Salman Alman Saud, becoming the relations between Riyadh and Washington.
Nicknamed “MBS”, the leader of the kingdom, who received Mr. Biden on Friday, “explained [to the latter] that it is [SSAI] T of a tragedy for Saudi Arabia”, according to The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir.
The Crown Prince assured that “the officials [had] been the subject of an investigation, had been confronted with justice and Pay [Ai] Ent now for crime,” added Adel al-Jubeir In an interview with CNN.
A Saudi tribunal sentenced, in 2020, eight men to a sentence of seven to twenty years in prison for the journalist’s assassination.
Questioned on an American intelligence report designating “MBS” as the sponsor of the operation, the Saudi Minister launched: “We know what intelligence had concluded about the weapons of mass destruction of Saddam Hussein” , which never existed. The Saudi official also highlighted the “errors” of the United States, citing the affair of Abu Ghraib, this Iraqi prison where American soldiers have practiced torture and humiliating treatments.
quoted by the Saudi channel al-Arabiya, an anonymous Saudi official also assured that the Khashoggi affair had been mentioned “quickly” at the meeting with Joe Biden, stressing that “such an incident [could ] Arriving all over the world “.
Ali Shihabi, an expert close to the Saudi government, assured that the crown prince had answered Mr. Biden by “emphasizing the double language of the Americans, making a lot of noise about Khashoggi while trying to minimize the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh “, a American-Palestinian journalist killed in May by an Israeli shot, according to the United Nations. “Apart from this frank exchange, the meeting was very cordial,” he assured at AFP.
Joe Biden undergoes an avalanche of criticisms for his meeting with “MBS”, when he had promised, during his campaign, to place human rights at the heart of his diplomacy.