Riyadh admits journo was killed in consulate
Salman fires close aides of Prince Mohammed, arrests 18 suspects
Saudi Arabia finally admitted on Saturday that dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside its Istanbul consulate and sacked two top aides to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The ouster of deputy intelligence chief Ahmed bin Hassan Assiri and royal court media advisor Saud Qahtani, both close aides of the prince, came alongside the arrests of 18 Saudi suspects and the dismissal of other intelligence officials.
Religious council backs king
Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, the Council of Senior Scholars, said King Salman’s decisions “achieve justice and equality in accordance with Islamic law.”
The kingdom said Khashoggi, 59, was killed in a fistfight inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul after he came to attend to paperwork for his marriage to his Turkish fiancee.
“The suspects had traveled to Istanbul to meet with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi as there were indications of the possibility of his returning back to the country,” the state-run Saudi Press Agency said in a series of statements.
But the discussions with Khashoggi turned into a heated argument and a brawl led to his death. The suspects then attempted to conceal what happened, the agency said.
‘Turkey’s claims baseless’
Saudi Arabia, however, contradicted assertions in Turkish media leaks that Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered inside the consulate.
The statement also did not shed any light on what happened to Khashoggi’s body after his death.
The White House said the United States would closely follow investigations into Khashoggi’s death and push for justice that is “timely, transparent and in accordance with all due process.”
Trump: Good first step
US President Donald Trump himself called the Saudi announcement a “good first step,” but said what happened to Khashoggi was “unacceptable.”
Asked by a reporter whether he thought Riyadh’s explanation was credible, Trump said, “I do. I do,” but said he wanted to talk with Prince Mohammed before he decided what to do next.
“Saudi Arabia has been a great ally, but what happened is unacceptable,” Trump said. “It’s a big first step. It’s only a first step, but it’s a big first step.”
While it fired Prince Mohammed’s closest aides, Saudi Arabia did not mention the prince in the report and King Salman appointed him to lead the restructuring of the intelligence services.
The prince’s aides
Assiri, a major general said to be in his 60s, often sat in during Prince Mohammed’s closeddoor meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries.
The Saudi daily Al-Hayat said Assiri was trained at the renowned French military school Saint-Cyr and was the “bestknown Saudi pilot in the world.”
Prior to 2017, Assiri served as the spokesperson for the Saudiled military alliance in Yemen which has been battling Houthi rebels since March 2015.
Qahtani, said to be 40 years old, was a media advisor in the royal court and steered online propaganda campaigns against the kingdom’s adversaries, such as Qatar and Iran, on social media.
Writing for The Washington Post earlier this year, Khashoggi claimed Qahtani maintained a “blacklist” of writers critical of the kingdom and was known to intimidate them.—