Saudi crown prince 'ordered op' targeting missing journalist
A combo of frame grabs created on October 10, 2018 and taken off a police CCTV video made available through the Turkish Newspaper Sabah, allegedly shows members of a group of Saudi citizens that Turkish police suspect of being involved in the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, at Istanbul's Ataturk airport on October 2, 2018. PHOTO | AFP
What you need to know:
- Friends claim Saudi officials had offered journalist protection, but he was sceptical
WASHINGTON,
Saudi Arabia's crown prince and de facto ruler ordered an operation targeting journalist and US resident Jamal Khashoggi, who has been missing for more than a week, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing US intelligence intercepts.
Khashoggi - a US resident and one of the more outspoken critics of the regime of King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, and Turkish officials suspect he was murdered.
The Post, a newspaper to which Khashoggi contributed, cited unnamed US officials as saying Saudi officials had been heard discussing a plan to lure Khashoggi from the US state of Virginia, where he lived, and detain him.
The paper quoted several of Khashoggi's friends as saying senior Saudi officials had approached him offering protection, or even a high-level government job, if he returned home, but that Khashoggi was sceptical of the offers.
State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino earlier insisted that the US had no forewarning of any concrete threat to Khashoggi. "Although I can't go into intelligence matters, I can definitively say that we had no knowledge in advance of Mr Khashoggi's disappearance," Palladino told reporters.
The case has sparked outrage from human rights and journalism groups and threatens to harm ties between Saudi Arabia and the US, which has demanded answers from the kingdom over the disappearance.
