Saudis to concede writer was killed, reports say
ISTANBUL — Saudi Arabia is reportedly ready to concede that a missing Saudi writer was killed in its consulate in Istanbul.
CNN reported Monday that the Saudi government was preparing to say Jamal Khashoggi died during an interrogation that went wrong. The report was attributed to two unnamed sources. It says one of the sources told them that the intention was to abduct Mr. Khashoggi and it had not been authorized by the Saudi government.
There was no independent confirmation, but Turkish officials quickly responded that Saudi rulers were searching for a narrative to avoid further opprobrium.
President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that he was aware of the report but did not know if it was correct.
“I’ve heard that report but nobody’s knows if it’s an official report. So far it’s just the rumor, the rumor of a report coming out,” he said.
He also said the U.S. is working with Saudi Arabia and Turkey to
figure out what happened. He called Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance a “terrible situation.”
At the same time, The New York Times reported that the Saudi royal court would soon put out a narrative that an official within the kingdom’s intelligence services — who happened to be a friend of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — had carried out the killing. According to that narrative, the crown prince had approved an interrogation or rendition of Mr. Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia, but the intelligence official was tragically incompetent as he eagerly sought to prove himself. Both reports cited anonymous people said to be familiar with the Saudi plans.
While living and working in the U.S., Mr. Khashoggi wrote columns in The Washington Post that were critical of the prince. He was last seen entering the Saudi consulate Oct. 2.
The CNN report came as Turkish crime scene investigators searched the Saudi consulate.
A joint Saudi-Turkish team arrived at the consulate in Istanbul’s upscale 4th Levent neighborhood as journalists filmed and shot photographs of the arrival.
A cleaning crew walked into the consulate hours ahead of the investigative team’s arrival.
Turkish officials have said they fear a Saudi hit team killed and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi. The kingdom has called such allegations “baseless” but has not offered any evidence Mr. Khashoggi ever left the consulate.
Hours earlier, in a comment that could give Saudi officials a route to climb down from outright denials, Mr. Trump suggested Monday that “rogue killers” could be responsible for the disappearance and presumed murder of Mr. Khashoggi.
Mr. Trump’s comment came after a 20-minute phone call with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman in which Mr. Trump said the king adamantly denied any knowledge of what happened to Mr. Khashoggi. Mr. Trump announced he’d dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the kingdom — and anywhere else necessary — to get to the bottom of the apparent demise of Mr. Khashoggi.
“The king firmly denied any knowledge of it,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he left the White House for a trip to survey hurricane damage in Florida and Georgia. Mr. Trump said he didn’t “want to get into [the king’s] mind,” but told reporters: “It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers. I mean, who knows? We’re going to try getting to the bottom of it very soon, but his was a flat denial.”
The comments marked a break from the Trump administration’s strenuous refusal to speculate over what happened to Mr. Khashoggi and came as the U.S. president is under growing pressure to take action on the case of the Saudi writer.
Trump administration officials told The Associated Press that intelligence collected by the U.S. is inconclusive as to what actually happened to Mr. Khashoggi. With such a lack of clarity, the administration has not ruled out any possible scenario. The officials were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.
The State Department has urged a thorough investigation into Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and called on Saudi Arabia to be transparent about the results — advice broadly tracking messages from allies in Europe. Germany, Britain and France issued a joint statement over the weekend expressing “grave concern” and calling for a credible investigation to ensure those responsible for the disappearance “are held to account.”
The prince — ambitious, aggressive and just 33 in a kingdom long ruled by aging monarchs — has considerable weight in Saudi government actions. He and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, have forged close ties.
Last week, Mr. Trump vowed to uncover the truth about what happened to Mr. Khashoggi and promised “severe punishment” for those responsible. But he has said that he does not want to halt a proposed $110 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia — as some in Congress have said he should — because it would harm the U.S. economically.
Saudi Arabia has pledged to retaliate economically for any U.S. punitive action. That would be an unprecedented breach in a decadesold economic and security relationship that is key to Washington’s policies in the Middle East. A Saudi-owned satellite channel later suggested the world’s largest oil exporter could wield that production as a weapon against America.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for now still plans to attend a previously scheduled Saudi conference this week to address terrorist financing.
Turkey has wanted to search the consulate for days. Permission apparently came after a call late Sunday between the king and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In statements after the call, both praised the creation of a joint Saudi-Turkish probe.
The Turkish inspection team included a prosecutor, a deputy prosecutor, antiterror police and forensic experts, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Certain areas of the consulate were to remain off-limits, although officials would be able to inspect surveillance cameras, Turkish media reported.
The furor over Mr. Khashoggi has dealt a setback to the prince’s pitch for the kingdom as a destination for foreign investment. Several business leaders and media outlets have backed out of the upcoming investment conference in Riyadh, called the Future Investment Initiative. They include the CEO of Uber, a company in which Saudi Arabia has invested billions of dollars; billionaire Richard Branson; JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief executive Jamie Dimon; and Ford Motor Co. executive chairman Bill Ford.