According to CNN, President Donald Trump insisted on Saturday that he raised the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“I did mention it to him very strongly. That was a bad event. I asked him what was happening,’’ said Trump.
Trump made this comments on a press conference at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, as he told the reporters that he was extremely angry and very unhappy about Khashoggi’s killing, saying that nobody has directly pointed a finger at bin Salman.
The reports by the CIA and the United Nations claim that bin Salman was involved in the killing of the Washington Post’s contributor.
Trump was also asked about the CIA’s claims that the Saudi crown prince played a role in Khashoggi’s murder to which Trump replied that he can not comment on intelligence.
“We can declassify. The truth is, I don’t want to talk about intelligence,’’ said Trump.
Trump praised bin Salman on several occasions and even said that he gets along with him.
Khashoggi was a known critic to the government of Saudi Arabia and was killed by Saudi agents in October last year in the Saudi consulate in Turkey.
While Riyadh initially claimed ignorance of the killing, the country’s attorney general later backtracked, acknowledging that Khashoggi was murdered and the killing was premeditated, according to The Hill.
A human rights expert from the United Nations proposed an investigation about bin Salman’s connection with the murder, as he said that some credible evidence supports the idea of the involvement of the crown prince in the deliberate premeditated execution of the journalist as bin Salman denied any connection in the murder.
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