Saudi Arabia admits Khashoggi's murder was premeditated. Fine. Who premeditated it?
SAUDI ARABIA once again changed its story about Jamal Khashoggi, admitting on Thursday he was the victim of a premeditated murder and not, as it said less than a week earlier , the accidental casualty of a “brawl.” But that doesn’t mean the regime of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has finally chosen to come clean about the Oct. 2 death of the Post contributing columnist.
Rather, it merely reflects Saudi acceptance of the reality that the previous official version, like the one before it and the one before that, wouldn’t fly with the Turkish president, the U.S. Congress, European governments and possibly even the Trump administration, which has been doing its best to assist the damage control operation in Riyadh. For 17 days, let’s not forget, the Saudi government insisted it knew for a fact that Mr. Khashoggi had walked out of the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul shortly after arriving. While the new story is closer to the truth, it still leaves fundamental questions unanswered: Who ordered the hit on the journalist, and what role did Mohammed bin Salman play?
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CIA Director Gina Haspel, who visited Istanbul this week, has heard that audiotape, according to The Post’s reporting. Yet the Trump administration has failed to offer its own conclusions about what happened to Mr. Khashoggi, who was a resident of Virginia with three U.S. citizen children. Instead it is doing its best to protect its excessive and unwise investment in Mohammed bin Salman as a Middle Eastern ally. Asked if he believed the 33-year-old crown prince’s denials of involvement, President Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that “I want to believe him. I really want to believe him.”
What Mr. Trump should really want is the truth. If Mohammed bin Salman in fact oversaw or sanctioned the brutal butchering of a journalist who was little more than a mild critic, the administration urgently needs to alter its relationship with him — or risk even worse disasters.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/global-opinions/saudi-arabia-admits-khashoggis-murder-was-premeditated-fine-who-premeditated-it/2018/10/25/24c20338-d884-11e8-aeb7-ddcad4a0a54e_story.html?__twitter_impression=true
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