US President Donald Trump has spoken to Saudi King Salman over the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and will send Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss the situation with the monarch.
Trump said in a tweet on Monday that the King denied any knowledge of the journalist’s whereabouts.
Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post and a Saudi royal insider-turned-critic, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2 and has not been seen since. Saudi authorities maintain Khashoggi left the consulate the same afternoon, but have provided no evidence of that.
“Just spoke to the King of Saudi Arabia who denies any knowledge of whatever may have happened ‘to our Saudi Arabian citizen.’ He said that they are working closely with Turkey to find answer. I am immediately sending our Secretary of State to meet with King!,” Trump tweeted.
International pressure is mounting on Riyadh to explain the journalist’s disappearance. Saudi Arabia has given Turkey permission to search its Istanbul consulate on Monday afternoon, a Turkish diplomatic source told CNN.
Saudi officials first granted permission for the consulate to be searched last week, but later asked for a delay and no search has yet taken place. Turkish officials also want to search the nearby consul general’s residence, and have repeatedly accused the Saudis of failing to cooperate with their investigation.
Khashoggi’s disappearance has created a diplomatic rift between Saudi and the West, with the UK, France and Germany demanding a “credible investigation” into the events and US President Donald Trump warning of serious retribution if the Saudis are found to be behind his possible death.
A joint Turkish-Saudi working group into the case has been proposed, but the results of a separate, internal Saudi investigation should be made public soon, a Saudi official with knowledge of the probe told CNN on Monday.
The Saudi official said that a royal decree was issued Friday directing the public prosecutor to conduct an internal investigation into the Khashoggi case, based on intelligence shared with Saudi Arabia by Turkey.
The official said that although a joint investigation team was cooperating on the ground, the Saudi “leadership had felt that an internal investigation was needed to make sure no stone is left unturned to unfold the truth.”
On Sunday, Washington and Riyadh traded a series of threats, with Trump warning of the potential for “severe punishment” and Saudi officials threatening to retaliate if the US imposed sanctions. Riyadh later softened its tone.
“There’s something really terrible and disgusting about that, if that were the case. So we’re going to have to see,” Trump said in a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast Sunday. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it and there will be severe punishment.”
Saudi Arabia’s stock market fell as much as 7 percent on Sunday amid fears of sanctions. The index recovered some ground later to close 3.5%percent down. The market’s drop of as much as 9 percent since Khashoggi vanished has wiped out all the market’s gains in 2018, although it is still up 8 percent from a year ago.
Washington’s “working assumption” is that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate in Istanbul, according to a US official familiar with the latest intelligence. “We are pretty clear eyed it is likely to have happened and it didn’t end well,” the official said. The source did caution that this was the latest assessment and no conclusions had been made.
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