Saudi crown prince denies killing journalist, calls it a ‘heinous’ crime

Saudi King Salman, right, and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, second from right, receive killed journalist Jamal Khashogg’s son Salah and brother Sahel to “offer them condolences” at the royal palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

and met last week with Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, who traveled to Riyadh to express the administration’s concern. Both Trump and Pompeo said the prince denied having ordered the execution of the journalist, who wrote opinion columns for The Washington Post and was a resident of Virginia.

On Wednesday, the Saudi government said the crown prince also spoke to Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan.

Prince Mohammed, at the conference, said: “Today the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is taking all the legal procedures to investigate and complete the investigations in working with the Turkish government ... to get the results and present those who are responsible to trial.”

He said there would be no rift between Turkey and Saudi Arabia as long as their current leaders are alive. “We will prove to the world that the two governments are cooperating to punish any criminal and any guilty party,” he said.

On Tuesday, Turkey’s Erodgan spoke to an assemblage of lawmakers from his political party about the killing. While he did not name the crown

prince, Erdogan seemed to have him in mind in calling for his father, Saudi King Salman, to undertake an “impartial investigation” into what Erdogan called a premeditated, savage murder. He also called on the king to extradite suspects to Turkey for trial, which is unlikely to happen.

Some analysts predicted Prince Mohammed, a 33year old political neophyte who has upended Saudi Arabia’s signature brand of low-profile backroom politics, may yet weather what is arguably the country’s greatest crisis since the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, in which most of the attackers were Saudis.

The dynastic Saudi system has no mechanism for removing a crown prince from the line of ascendancy. Only the king can name his heir. While Salman has dozens of other princes to choose from, he is said to be in bad health and unlikely to be able to pull off such a maneuver.

Meanwhile, Prince Mohammed has many backers in international capitals, notably Trump and his son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, who are hoping to move past the grisly case quickly.