New Delhi: President Donald Trump said on Thursday he presumes missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is dead and that the US response to Saudi Arabia will likely be “very severe” but that he still wanted to get to the bottom of what exactly happened.
Turkish police are searching a forest on the outskirts of Istanbul and a city near the Sea of Marmara for the remains of Khashoggi more than two weeks after he vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, two senior Turkish officials told Reuters.
Timeline of Events
Prominent Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi disappeared after entering Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to get documents related to his upcoming nuptials. Khashoggi, an acclaimed columnist at the Washington Post, had been living in exile in the US for over a year and was one of the most vocal critics of the Saudi government’s reform programme under crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. He had strongly voiced his dissent about the muzzling of criticism in Saudi media and Saudi policies towards Qatar and the war in Yemen.
After the Turkish pro-government newspaper Sabah identified a 15-member intelligence team that it said was responsible for the disappearance of Khashoggi, Turkish sources corroborated the claim that he was murdered inside the Saudi consulate, releasing CCTV footage of him entering the consulate.
Collective outcry in Washington from lawmakers and foreign policy analysts prompted the Trump administration to take a strong step in this direction.
The Trump administration displayed reluctance in condemning the purported Saudi attack on Khashoggi with the imposition of targeted sanctions. Under US law, major foreign military sales can be blocked by the Congress on the grounds of suspicion over whether the weapons being supplied would be used to kill civilians.
Trump stated that his administration had won a $110 billion military order from Saudi Arabia and that the imposition of sanctions would effectively mean that that US was “punishing” itself. Major US defence contractors, including Lockheed Martin Corp and Raytheon Co, are among the beneficiaries of Washington’s major arms deals.
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Saudi Arabia soon warned of retaliation against the alleged threats to punish it over Khashoggi’s disappearance and Saudi-owned Al Arabiya channel’s general manager Turki Aldakhil warned that imposing sanctions on the world’s largest oil exporter could spark global economic disaster.
However, in response to Khashoggi’s disappearance, media organisations and a growing number of executives, including the US treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, pulled out of Riyadh’s Future Investment Initiative dubbed “Davos in the Desert.”
Just met with @realDonaldTrump and @SecPompeo and we have decided, I will not be participating in the Future Investment Initiative summit in Saudi Arabia.
— Steven Mnuchin (@stevenmnuchin1) October 18, 2018
“This incident is unacceptable and clearly they have to answer questions specifically regarding this incident,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told CNBC. Earlier on Thursday, senior government ministers from France, Britain and the Netherlands also withdrew from the Riyadh conference, joining a list of international officials and business executives.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said that Saudi Arabia has started a full investigation into the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
Diplomatic Row
Trump, who has forged closer ties with Saudi Arabia and the 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that Khashoggi, a US resident and Washington Post columnist, had likely been killed.
“It certainly looks that way to me. It’s very sad,” Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One on a political trip. In an interview with the New York Times on Thursday, Trump based his acknowledgement that Khashoggi was dead on intelligence reports.
In the New York Times interview, Trump also expressed confidence in intelligence reports that suggest a high-level Saudi role in the suspected killing of Khashoggi. Trump said, however, it was still “a little bit early” to draw definitive conclusions about who may have been behind it. Trump said he was waiting for the results so that “we can get to the bottom of this very soon” and that he would be making a statement about it at some point. Asked what would be the consequences for Saudi Arabia, Trump said: “Well, it’ll have to be very severe. I mean, it’s bad, bad stuff. But we’ll see what happens.”
Trump spoke hours after receiving an update from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the results of Pompeo’s emergency talks in Saudi Arabia and Turkey this week.
Pompeo told reporters that he advised Trump that Saudi Arabia should be given a few more days to complete its investigation into the disappearance of Khashoggi, which has caused an international outcry and strained Saudi relations with western countries and corporations. Referring to the Saudis, Pompeo said he told Trump that when the Saudi investigation was completed “we can make decisions about how – or if – the US should respond to the incident surrounding Mr. Khashoggi.”
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his visits in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 16, 2018. Credit: REUTERS/Leah Millis/Pool
By casting doubt on whether the US will respond at all, Pompeo reflected the internal struggle among Trump and his national security advisers on what to do should the Saudi leadership be blamed for what happened to Khashoggi. “I think it’s important for us all to remember, too – we have a long, since 1932, a long strategic relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” Pompeo told reporters, also calling Saudi Arabia “an important counterterrorism partner.”
The US considers Riyadh a linchpin in efforts to contain Iran’s regional influence and a key global oil source, and Trump has shown no inclination to mete out harsh punishment to the Saudis. The US and other Western nations are in a dilemma of how to respond because of lucrative business ties, including weapons sales to Riyadh.
A US government source said that US intelligence agencies are increasingly convinced of the crown prince’s culpability in the operation against Khashoggi, which they believe resulted in his death.
How Western allies deal with Riyadh will hinge on the extent to which they believe responsibility for Khashoggi’s disappearance lies with Prince Mohammed and the Saudi authorities. Trump previously speculated without providing evidence that “rogue killers” could be responsible.
Also Read: Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Arabia’s Overdue Reckoning
Khashoggi’s disappearance further deepened divisions between Turkey and Saudi Arabia which were already strained after Turkey sent troops to the Gulf state of Qatar last year in a show of support after its Gulf neighbours imposed an embargo on Doha.
Police Search Forest, Rural Location
Turkish officials have said they believe Khashoggi was murdered at the consulate and his body chopped up and removed. After investigations at the Saudi consulate and the consul’s residence, Turkish authorities have widened the geographic focus of the search, the senior Turkish officials said. Investigators tracked the routes and stops of cars that left those two places on Oct. 2, the officials said.
Turkish police officers with a sniffer dog examine the backyard of Saudi Arabia’s Consul General Mohammad al-Otaibi’s residence in Istanbul, Turkey October 18, 2018. Credit: REUTERS/Kemal Aslan
Khashoggi’s killers may have dumped his remains in Belgrad Forest adjacent to Istanbul, and at a rural location near the city of Yalova, a 90-kilometre (55 mile) drive south of Istanbul, the officials said.
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“The investigations led to some suspicion that his remains may be in the city of Yalova and the Belgrad forest, police have been searching these areas,” one of the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A “farm house or villa” may have been used for the disposal of remains, the official said.
The pro-government Sabah newspaper published a series of photos of a man it identified as someone who travels with the Saudi crown prince. The time-stamped photos showed the man outside the Saudi consulate building in Istanbul on the morning Khashoggi disappeared, Sabah said.
Khashoggi went to the consulate seeking documents for his planned marriage to his Turkish fiancee, who was waiting outside, and was never seen again.
(With inputs from Reuters)