Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has denounced the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and vowed that justice would prevail. After holding a telephonic conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the killing of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Crown Prince said, there would be no rupture in ties with Ankara. In his first comments since the journalist’s murder, he said, it is a repulsive incident and no one can justify it.
Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, disappeared after he entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey on October 2. The Saudi government initially said he left the consulate through the back door. Following a global outrage, Riyadh acknowledged that Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight inside the consulate after an interrogation went wrong. The whereabouts of Khashoggi’s corpse is still unknown.
The US State Department said, it has identified 21 Saudis whose visas would either be revoked or who would be ineligible for future visas.France also weighed in, saying it would take punitive measures, if Saudi Arabia was proven to be behind the murder.
In a phone call with the Saudi Crown Prince, British Prime Minister Theresa May strongly urged Saudi Arabia to co-operate with the Turkish investigation. Turkish pro-government media reported that Turkish intelligence had shared all the evidence with the CIA gathered from its investigation into the killing of Khashoggi.
