US to revoke visas of Saudis implicated in killing of writer

UNITED STATES President Donald Trump yesterday described the killing of a Saudi journalist as a botched operation and a “bad original concept” as his administration took its first, careful steps toward punishing the Saudis by moving to revoke the visas of the suspects.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said the entire operation was a fiasco.

“They had a very bad original concept,” Trump said. “It was carried out poorly, and the cover-up was one of the worst cover-ups in the history of coverups. Somebody really messed up, and they had the worst cover-up ever.”

Even in the face of ugly details of Jamal Khashoggi’s slaying, Trump has resisted calls to cut off arms sales to the kingdom and has been reluctant to antagonise the Saudi rulers. Trump considers the Saudis to be vital allies in his Mideast agenda.

Members of Congress have demanded that sanctions be imposed on Saudi Arabia over the killing of Khashoggi, who lived in self-imposed exile in the US and wrote critically about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The writer, who was a contributor to The Washington

Post, vanished on October 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Turkey, where he went to pick up documents for his marriage to his Turkish fiancee.

Turkish officials say that a Saudi team of 15 men tortured, killed and dismembered the writer and that Saudi officials had planned the killing for days. Saudi officials – after weeks of denials – now concede that he died, but they say it happened accidentally in a fight at the consulate.

“It was a total fiasco,” Trump said. “The process was no good. The execution was no good. And the cover-up, if you want to call it that, was certainly no good.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the move to revoke visas was just a first step.

It was a total fiasco. The process was no good. The execution was no good. And the cover-up, if you want to call it that, was certainly no good.’

AP Turkish police crime scene investigators, looking for possible clues into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, work in an underground car park, where authorities Monday found a vehicle belonging to the Saudi consulate, in Istanbul, Tuesday, October 23, 2018. Saudi officials murdered Khashoggi in their Istanbul consulate after plotting his death for days, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday, contradicting Saudi Arabia’s explanation that the writer was accidentally killed.