Biden says Saudis lied about nature of talks on Khashoggi
President Joe Biden, fresh off a controversial visit to Saudi Arabia over the weekend, accused a senior government official there of not telling the truth about a discussion he had with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Biden publicly said he confronted Mohammed, the de facto Saudi ruler of Saudi Arabia known as MBS, about his role in the murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul nearly four years ago. Biden said he indicated to Mohammed in a meeting that he holds him personally responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.
While Saudi officials confirmed that Biden raised the issue with the crown prince, the two sides’ accounts of the conversation have since diverged. The Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, said Saturday he “didn’t hear” Biden tell Mohammed this.
When Biden stepped off Air Force One in Washington after midnight on Sunday, journalists asked him about Jubeir’s comment.
One reporter asked: “The Saudi foreign minister says he didn’t hear you accuse the crown prince of Khashoggi’s murder. Is he telling the truth?” Biden answered, “No.”
It was the latest controversy to emerge from Biden’s first visit as president to the kingdom, which Biden once promised to make a “pariah” over Khashoggi’s killing and other human rights abuses. Critics back home argued that Biden’s trip was a public relations win for Saudi Arabia that delivered little for the United States.
While in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, for a meeting of the heads of Gulf Cooperation Council members and their allies, Biden met with and fist-bumped the crown prince — yielding photos that some in the United States have held up as evidence of chumminess between the two leaders, even as Biden made clear his discomfort with the notion of sitting down with Mohammed.
Biden told reporters in Jiddah on Friday that he raised Khashoggi’s murder “at the top of the meeting” with Mohammed. “I said very straightforwardly: For an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights, is this consistent with — inconsistent with who we are and who I am? I’ll always stand up for our values,” Biden said of their exchange. When asked how the crown prince reacted, Biden said he “basically said that he was not personally responsible for it.”
“I indicated that I thought he was,” Biden added. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Mohammed directed the killing of Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for the Washington Post and an outspoken critic of the Saudi regime.
The Saudi leader has denied any personal involvement, and a Saudi court sentenced five people to death for the crime, although their sentences were later reduced to 20 years in prison.