CIA: Saudi Crown Prince Ordered Khashoggi’s Assassination

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month.

According to a report in the Washington Post, the finding by the CIA contradicting the Saudi Arabia government’s claims that the Crown Prince was not involved in the killing.

The CIA’s assessment is the most definitive to date linking Mohammed to the operation. The finding will also complicate the President Trump administration’s efforts to preserve its relationship with a close ally.

A team of 15 Saudi agents flew to Istanbul, Turkey on government aircraft in October and killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate, where he had come to pick up documents that he needed for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.

The Chicago Tribune also reported that, in reaching its conclusions, the CIA examined multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, had with Khashoggi, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condi- tion of anonymity to discuss the intelligence. Khalid told Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post, that he should go to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to retrieve the documents and gave him assurances that it would be safe to do so.

However, Fatimah Baeshen, a spokeswoman for the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., said the ambassador and Khashoggi never discussed “anything related to going to Turkey.”

According to her, the claims in the CIA’s “purported assessment are false. We have and continue to hear various theories without seeing the primary basis for these speculations.”