United States President Donald Trump on Saturday said his administration will release a full report in the next two days on the death of a Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “We’ll be having a very full report over the next two days, probably Monday or Tuesday,” Al Jazeera quoted him as saying. The report will include information on “who did it,” he said.
Khashoggi’s murder has posed a diplomatic problem for the US as Saudi Arabia is considered to be “a spectacular ally”. Trump declined to reveal whether Central Intelligence Agency officials had implicated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder after reports that the agency concluded that Salman had ordered Khashoggi’s assassination, reported Politico. “As of this moment we were told that he [Salman] did not play a role,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to find out what they have to say.”
On Thursday, the US announced economic sanctions on 17 Saudi persons suspected of having a role in the murder. These persons include top aides of Salman. Saudi Arabia said it had indicted 11 suspects for Khashoggi’s murder and prosecutors sought the death penalty for five of them. The public prosecutor exonerated Salman and instead accused two senior officials of giving the orders to murder Khashoggi.
Khashoggi, a vocal critic of the Saudi regime, went missing on October 2 when he was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for paperwork of his upcoming marriage. Saudi Arabia initially claimed to have no information about his disappearance but later admitted he was killed by agents working without Riyadh’s knowledge.
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