Published
4 years agoon
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday the United States is being “very tough” as it looks into a Saudi writer missing and feared murdered in Istanbul, adding “we have investigators over there and we’re working with Turkey” and with Saudi Arabia.
The Post, citing anonymous U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence, said Prince Mohammed ordered an operation to lure Khashoggi from his home in Virginia to Saudi Arabia and then detain him.
Saudi Arabia has called the allegation it abducted or harmed Khashoggi “baseless.” It has offered no evidence to support its claim the writer simply walked out of its consulate and vanished despite his fiancée waiting outside for him.
Decades of close U.S.-Saudi relations, which have only intensified under Trump, appeared in jeopardy by the suggestion of a carefully plotted murder of a government critic. Trump on Thursday described the relationship as “excellent.”
Pressure, meanwhile, mounted in Congress for the Trump administration to address the writer’s disappearance.
More than 20 Republican and Democratic senators instructed Trump to order an investigation under legislation that authorizes imposition of sanctions for perpetrators of extrajudicial killings, torture or other gross human rights violations.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a longtime critic of the Saudi government, has said he’ll try to force a vote in the Senate blocking U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said it would be time for the U.S. to rethink its relationship with Saudi Arabia if it turned out Khashoggi was lured to his death by the Saudis.
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