Turkey seeks arrest of Saudi aides over Khashoggi death
- by Muriel Colon
- in Global Media
- — Dec 6, 2018
USA senators said a classified briefing from the Central Intelligence Agency convinced them that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman played a role in dissident columnist Jamal Khashoggi's dismemberment, with one describing the evidence as "a smoking saw".
"There's not a smoking gun; there's a smoking saw", said Graham, referring to reports that Khashoggi's body was dismembered by a bone saw after he was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Democratic leaders say CIA Director Gina Haspel should give the full Senate the same briefing they received on the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (jah-MAHL' khahr-SHOHK'-jee). If he was in front of jury he would be convicted in 30 minutes, guilty.
Prince Mohammed, who has been making his first foreign tour since the October 2 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, held talks instead with Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, Algeria's presidency said. Graham, who's proven to be a staunch Trump supporter as of late, goes as far to say that he and his party members were purposefully mislead by Mike Pompeo and Jim Mattis, who had previously said there was no "smoking gun".
Khashoggi, a USA resident who wrote for the Washington Post, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October in what US officials have described as an elaborate plot.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who demanded the briefing with Haspel, said there is "zero chance" the crown prince wasn't involved in Khashoggi's death.
Graham rejected their assessment outright, saying "you have to be willfully blind" not to conclude that the murder was orchestrated by people under Prince Mohammed's command.
"At no time did HRH the Crown Prince correspond with any saudi officials in any government entity on harming Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen", she said on Twitter.
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Last week, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to move forward on a resolution curtailing USA backing for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The resolution also calls on Riyadh to negotiate with representatives of the Houthi movement in Yemen in an effort to end that country's bloody civil war and subsequent humanitarian crisis.
The U.S. began helping the Saudis when they entered the war more than three years ago, providing weapons, training, intelligence and targeting information for the Saudi bombing campaign.
Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, a former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also voted no on advancing the resolution.
"The prosecution's move to issue arrest warrants for Asiri and Qahtani reflects the view that the Saudi authorities won't take formal action against those individuals", one unnamed Turkish official told Reuters.
The South Carolina senator continued, "Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, and the relationship is worth saving-but not at all cost".
Some of the most important evidence may be an audio recording of the murder that Turkey said it has distributed. "I'm not going to blow past this", he said.
Among the options: pull back from USA involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen; deny any arms sales with Saudi Arabia; slap the crown prince with sanctions, along with a resolution saying the Senate finds him complicit in murder, it said.
Graham, a confidant of Trump, had said he would refuse to support "any key vote" until Haspel spoke to lawmakers.