MbS Says He ‘Bears Responsibility’ for Khashoggi Killing

Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, says in an upcoming documentary that he bears ultimate responsibility for the death and disappearance of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi early last October at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. “It happened under my watch. I get all the responsibility, because it happened under my watch,” the crown prince says in the documentary, to be broadcast on October 1 by the American PBS network. It was the first time he has spoken to outsiders about the incident, in which the Saudi-born Khashoggi, an op-ed contributor to The Washington Post and an outspoken critic of the kingdom, was caught on a Turkish security camera entering the consulate on October 2, 2018, to obtain documents he required for an upcoming wedding. He never emerged. Investigations by Turkey, including purported audio recordings of the killing, led to flat denials of involvement by Riyadh. As outrage grew, though, the Saudi government said that Khashoggi had been strangled and dismembered by “rogue” intelligence operatives who were being put on trial, but that Mohammed bin Salman himself knew nothing about it.