By Aaron Miller-
Saudi Arabia have announced that they don’t know where the body of murdered journalist Jamal . In what appears to be a new account of the murder, Saudi Arabia says Khashoggi was killed in a rogue operation by ”persons who acted in excess of their authority”.
Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News “the murder” had been a “tremendous mistake” committed by people who acted in excess of their authority
UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has condemned the killing “in the strongest possible terms. He warned that despite Britain’s close security links with Saudi Arabia, London would “act accordingly” if “the appalling stories we are reading turn out to be true”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier went a step further than Britain in saying she would not allow arms exports to Saudi Arabia to continue. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau threatened to cancel a multi-billion dollar defense contract. The murder has aroused international uproar and will strongly test the backbone of Saudi Arabia’s allies. Should they be prepared to forgo their multi billion deals from which they stand to gain, or should they wait for a careful investigation of the murder to unravel?
All suspicion points to the Saudi Crown as culprits of this terrible crime, but there is no concrete evidence of his involvement so far. Khahoggi’s killing is one of the most notoriois of recent times.
Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The Crown admitted for the first time on Friday that the U.S based journalist was dead, saying he had been killed in a fight. Turkish d officials have disputed that account and insist Khashoggi- a dissident of the Saudi government was murdered by a team of Saudi agents inside the building and say they have evidence to prove it.
A minister on behalf of The Saudi Government said:
“We are determined to find out all the facts and we are determined to punish those who are responsible for this murder,” he said.
“The individuals who did this did this outside the scope of their authority,” he added. “There obviously was a tremendous mistake made, and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up.”
The minister also said that Saudi Arabia did not know where the body was and insisted the action had not been ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, seen as the country’s most powerful figure.
“Even the senior leadership of our intelligence service was not aware of this,” he said, calling it a “rogue operation”.However, Yeni Safak, a media outlet close to Turkey’s government, says it has information showing that the office of the crown prince received four phone calls from the consulate after the killing.
IMPERSONATOR
However, video footage posted by Turkish media appears to show an impersonator appearing in Khadashoggi likeness leaving the consulate by the back door on the day the journalist was killed. He was wearing Khashoggi’s clothes, a fake beard and glasses. Conspicuously, the hair colour of the impersonator was different to that of have also posted footage that appears to show a Saudi consular staff in Istanbul burning documents a day after Khashoggi’s disappearance.
Saudi officials say they have arrested 18 people, sacked two aides of Mohammed bin Salman and set up a body, under his leadership, to reform the intelligence agency over the killing.