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Saudi crown prince told aide he would use ‘a bullet’ on Khashoggi

By AFP
08 February 2019   |   1:18 pm
Saudi Arabia's crown prince told a senior aide he would go after Jamal Khashoggi "with a bullet" a year before the dissident journalist was killed inside the kingdom's Istanbul consulate, the New York Times reported Thursday quoting US intelligence.

(FILES) In this file photo taken on December 15, 2014, general manager of Alarab TV, Jamal Khashoggi, looks on during a press conference in the Bahraini capital Manama. – US President Donald Trump said October 11, 2018 he was not yet prepared to limit arms sales to Saudi Arabia over journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, but he faced mounting pressure from concerned American lawmakers. Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s largest arms purchasers, with most of them coming from the United States.Khashoggi, a contributor to The Washington Post, vanished more than a week ago during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkish government sources say he was murdered there, a claim Riyadh denies. (Photo by MOHAMMED AL-SHAIKH / AFP)

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince told a senior aide he would go after Jamal Khashoggi “with a bullet” a year before the dissident journalist was killed inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate, the New York Times reported Thursday quoting US intelligence.

US intelligence understood that Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s 33-year-old de facto ruler, was ready to kill the journalist, although he may not have literally meant to shoot him, according to the newspaper.

After initially denying any knowledge of Khashoggi’s disappearance, the kingdom has acknowledged that a team killed him inside the diplomatic mission but described it as a rogue operation that did not involve the crown prince.

The conversation was intercepted by US intelligence agencies, as part of routine efforts by the National Security Agency and other agencies to capture and store the communications of global leaders, including allied ones, The Times said.

It was only recently transcribed, however, because of mounting efforts by US intelligence to find more conclusive proof linking the prince to the killing.

The conversation took place between Prince Mohammed and an aide, Turki Aldakhil, in September 2017 — around 13 months before the October 2 killing, the paper said.

The prince said that if Khashoggi could not be enticed to return to Saudi Arabia, then he should be brought back by force. If neither of those methods worked, then he would go after Mr. Khashoggi “with a bullet,” he said.

It came as officials in the kingdom were growing increasingly angry about Khashoggi’s criticisms — and the same month he began writing opinion pieces for The Washington Post.

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