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John Wagner
National journalist heads up the political press team at The Post newspaper
Souad Mekhennet
Reporter covering national security, the Middle East, North Africa, terrorism, Europe.
ISTANBUL – President Trump announced Monday that he would send state secretary Mike Pompeo to meet Saudi King Salman in the context of a growing international response to Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post editorialist.
The kingdom underwent a thorough examination after the disappearance of Khashoggi, who, according to Turkish investigators, was killed and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
In a tweet, Trump said he spoke to the Saudi king, "who denies any knowledge of what could have happened" to our Saudi citizen. "He claimed that they were working closely with Turkey to find an answer."
"I immediately send our Secretary of State meeting King!" Wrote Trump.
Her tweet came hours after three Turkish officials announced to Saudi Arabia that she was allowing Turkish investigators to search the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on Monday, 13 days after the disappearance. Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, after his entry into the mission.
Two officials said the search could take place as early as Monday afternoon. Turkey had publicly rebuked the Saudi government for refusing to reiterate its search requests to the consulate, with Turkish investigators saying that Khashoggi had been killed and dismembered by Saudi agents.
Saudi Arabia vehemently denied any knowledge of Khashoggi's whereabouts. The conspiracy search agreement comes a day after King Salman called on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, thanking him for welcoming the kingdom's proposal to create a "joint working group" to investigate the disappearance of Khashoggi, announced a Saudi announcement.
Khashoggi lived in exile in the United States last year and wrote articles in the Washington Post criticizing Saudi leaders. He went to the consulate of Saudi Arabia on October 2 to obtain documents relating to his upcoming marriage, but he was never seen leaving.
The Saudi government has been under intense pressure to reveal its fate. Turkish officials have published detailed information about their investigation, including a video suggesting that a team of Saudi agents would have been sent to Istanbul to capture Khashoggi or kill him.
[Kushner now faces a reckoning for Trump’s bet on Saudi heir]
The Turkish government also told the Trump administration that it had audio recordings of what happened in the consulate that day – evidence, according to US officials, corroborates the finding that Khashoggi questioned, tortured and then murdered.
US officials also said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered an operation to bring Khashoggi from his home in Virginia to Saudi Arabia and then to detain him, according to intelligence gathered during the raid. conversations intercepted by Saudi officials.
As part of a growing international reaction against the Saudi government, some executives and companies said they would no longer participate in a high-level conference on planned investment in Saudi Arabia. Arabia later this month. President Trump warned that Saudi Arabia would be "severely punished" if it killed Khashoggi. And on Sunday, Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement in which they expressed "grave concern" about Khashoggi's case and called for a "credible investigation".
A provocative Saudi statement said on Sunday that the kingdom rejected any "threat and attempt to undermine the threat, whether by threatening to impose economic sanctions, using political pressure or repeating false accusations".
In an interview broadcast Sunday on "60 Minutes," Trump pointed out that the Saudis had denied any involvement.
"Well, nobody knows it yet, but we will probably know it," he told Lesley Stahl of the CBS program. "We study, we examine very, very strongly. And we would be very angry and angry if that was the case. From that moment, they deny it and vehemently deny it. Would it be them? Yes."
Although he warns of a possible "severe penalty", Trump has repeatedly ruled out the cancellation of $ 110 billion in arms sales to the United States in Saudi Arabia.
On Saturday, he told reporters at the White House that this would be "very ridiculous for our country" and would only hurt the US defense industry and others.
Trump said the United States was competing with China, Russia and other countries for Saudi contracts and that getting it was "a great command for our businesses."
Wagner reported from Washington.
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