WASHINGTON, Oct 19, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – President Donald Trump said Thursday
he now believes journalist Jamal Khashoggi is dead and warned of “very
severe” consequences should Saudi Arabia be proven responsible.
“It certainly looks that way to me. It’s very sad,” Trump told journalists
when asked if he believed that Khashoggi, who disappeared more than two weeks
ago, is no longer alive.
Asked about the potential US response to Saudi Arabia, which is accused of
murdering the Washington Post columnist and critic of the Saudi regime, Trump
said: “It will have to be very severe. It’s bad, bad stuff.”
This marked a hardening of tone from the Trump administration, which has
been reluctant to blame ally Saudi Arabia, despite mounting evidence that the
kingdom’s agents killed and dismembered Khashoggi inside its consulate in
Istanbul more than two weeks ago.
A former regime insider, Khashoggi had become a critic of powerful Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the point man in ever-tightening military and
commercial relations between the petro-state and the Trump administration.
Just hours earlier, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he had told Trump
the Saudis should be given “a few more days to complete” an investigation.
Only then, Pompeo said, “we can make decisions how or if the United States
should respond.”
In a possible sign of how the Saudis will seek to defuse the diplomatic
crisis, The New York Times reported that the country’s rulers could come out
and blame General Ahmed al-Assiri, a top intelligence official close to the
crown prince.
– Call for UN probe –
Four prominent human rights and press freedom groups on Thursday urged
Turkey to request a United Nations investigation to prevent a “whitewash” of
the alleged crime.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty
International and Reporters Without Borders said such a probe established by
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres would finally clear up the affair.
But the United States, the Saudis’ most powerful patron, has repeatedly
given the country’s royals the benefit of the doubt, with Trump and top
officials stressing that the US-Saudi relationship cannot be put at risk.
Trump has repeatedly praised massive Saudi arms purchases, while Pompeo
used much of his brief remarks on Thursday to recall Washington’s “long
strategic relationship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
The Saudis “continue to be an important counter-terrorism partner, they
have custody of the two holy sites… We need to be mindful of that as well,”
he said.
– Market takes a hit –
The furor has also blown a hole in next week’s Future Investment Initiative
conference in Riyadh, which was meant to showcase Prince Mohammed’s plans for
modernizing the desert kingdom.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was pulling out, joining
senior ministers from Britain, France and the Netherlands, as well as a
string of corporate leaders.
Mnuchin’s announcement on Twitter helped push down stock prices on Wall
Street.
His withdrawal “raises worry that the administration is being pushed to
take a harder line against Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi murder and there
could be retaliation,” said Karl Haeling of LBBW.
Responses from Saudi Arabia could include selling US Treasuries, or
punishing US companies seeking business in the kingdom, Haeling said.
Most analysts don’t think Saudi Arabia would cut off oil supplies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, took a dig at Washington,
saying that “the US holds a certain responsibility over what happened to
him.”
But he said Moscow would not “start deteriorating relations” with Saudi
Arabia as long as “it did not know what really happened.”
– Gory details –
Neither Turkey nor the United States has publicly confirmed that Khashoggi
is dead or said officially that Riyadh is to blame.
But a steady stream of unconfirmed leaks from officials to Turkish media
have painted a detailed and horrifying picture of Khashoggi’s last minutes,
allegedly at the hands of 15 Saudi agents waiting for him when he came to the
consulate for paperwork.
The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper on Wednesday claimed it had heard
audio tapes in which Khashoggi’s alleged killers tortured him by cutting his
fingers off before his decapitation.
The pro-government Sabah newspaper on Thursday said Saudi security official
Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, believed to be close to the crown prince, was the
leader of the operation.
“Here is the head of the execution team,” said Sabah’s headline, and the
paper then detailed Mutreb’s movements on the day Khashoggi went missing.