Trump sends Pompeo to Riyadh as Saudi King denies knowledge

Donald Trump on Monday spoke with the Saudi King Salman over missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi and “immediately” dispatched his top diplomat to Riyadh to discuss the issue with the monarch who denied having any knowledge about the dissident who, Trump believes, could have been a victim of “rogue killers”.

“I just spoke to the king of Saudi Arabia who denies any knowledge of what took place with regard to, as he said, his Saudi Arabian citizen. I’ve asked, and he firmly denied that,” Trump told media after talking to Salman over phone. Trump said he has asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to immediately get on a plane, go to Saudi Arabia, go to other places if necessary, which he probably

will, but with regards to this, go to Turkey if necessary.

“The King told me Turkey and Saudi Arabia are working hand in hand, very closely, on getting to the bottom of what happened. So, we’ll see what happens, but Mike Pompeo is leaving literally within an hour or so. He’s heading to Saudi Arabia,” said the US President.

Asserting the US is going to leave nothing uncovered, Trump reiterated that the Saudi King firmly denied any knowledge of it.

“He did not really know, maybe, I don’t want to get into his mind, but it sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers, who knows. We’re going to try getting to the bottom of it very soon. But his was a flat denial,” he said.

Meanwhile, Turkish media said police started probing a claim Khashoggi’s body was dissolved using acid inside the Saudi consulate. “Police and MIT (Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency) are now probing this claim seriously. They are looking into if the body of Khashoggi was dissolved using acid,” Haberturk website’s columnist Sevilay Yilman wrote.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi King Salman discussed Khashoggi in their first telephone talks.