{"id":188994,"date":"2018-11-10T01:02:07","date_gmt":"2018-11-10T06:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=188994"},"modified":"2018-11-10T01:02:07","modified_gmt":"2018-11-10T06:02:07","slug":"ex-saudi-spy-chief-no-independent-khashoggi-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/11\/10\/ex-saudi-spy-chief-no-independent-khashoggi-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex Saudi spy chief: No independent Khashoggi investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cThe truth is you can never hide the truth \u2014 and the kingdom will never attempt to hide the truth, not just on this situation but on other situations,\u201d he said. (File Photo By Mueller \/ MSC\/Wikimedia <\/a>commons, CC BY 3.0 de<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former spy chief, said Friday the country is proud of its judicial system and will never accept an\u00a0internationalinvestigation into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.<\/p>\n

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, human rights groups, and some government leaders have called for an independent probe into the Oct. 2 killing of the Washington Post columnist at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul where he had gone to get papers so he could marry his Turkish fiance. The United States called Monday for a \u201cthorough, conclusive and transparent\u201d investigation at the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.<\/p>\n

Turki said in a speech and question-and-answer session at the\u00a0International\u00a0Peace Institute think-tank that he expects the kingdom to live up to its promise to investigate and \u201cput all of the facts on the table\u201d and answer all outstanding questions, including what happened to Khashoggi’s body.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kingdom is not going to accept an\u00a0international\u00a0tribunal to look into something that is Saudi, and the Saudi judicial system is sound, it is up, it is running, and it will take its course,\u201d he said. \u201cThe kingdom … will never accept foreign interference in that system.\u201d<\/p>\n

In doing this, Turki said, Saudi Arabia is following other countries that have refused to allow\u00a0international\u00a0tribunals to investigate acts that happened on their soil or elsewhere by their citizens. He cited the abuse of prisoners by American troops and CIA staff at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion which the United States investigated.<\/p>\n

Turki said Khashoggi was the Saudi embassy spokesman when he was ambassador to the United States and Britain, and they had been \u201cvery friendly over the years.\u201d He described Khashoggi’s death, citing a verse from the Qur’an. \u201cIt says that the killing of an innocent man is like the killing of all of humanity. His death falls into that category,\u201d Turki said.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia had insisted for weeks after Khashoggi disappeared that he had walked out of the consulate, before changing its account to say he died in a brawl. Last month, Saudi Arabia acknowledged that Turkish evidence indicates that Khashoggi’s killing was premeditated, shifting its explanation in an apparent effort to easeinternational\u00a0outrage over the death.<\/p>\n

Turkey says Khashoggi, who was critical of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was strangled and dismembered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 by a 15-member assassination squad. Media reports have suggested that his body could have been chemically dissolved.<\/p>\n

Saudi officials characterize the killing as a rogue operation carried out by Saudi agents who exceeded their authority. Yet some of those implicated in the killing are close to the crown prince, including a member of the prince’s entourage on foreign trips who was seen at the consulate before Khashoggi’s slaying. And crown prince Mohammed’s condemnation of the killing has failed to ease suspicions that he was involved.<\/p>\n

Turkey is seeking the extradition of 18 suspects who have been detained in Saudi Arabia, so they can be put on trial in Turkey. They include the 15 members of the alleged \u201chit squad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prince Turki, who is chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, said his view is that there was no attempted cover up.<\/p>\n

Rather, he said, what was reported to Saudi authorities was \u201cmisleading\u201d because \u201cthose who perpetrated the crime wanted to hide what had happened and to justify what they had told the authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

He accused the media of seeking \u201csensation\u201d and of \u201claying accusations\u201d about the crown prince \u201cwithout a fact,\u201d and based on \u201cpure speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is you can never hide the truth \u2014 and the kingdom will never attempt to hide the truth, not just on this situation but on other situations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He reiterated that the final report \u201cwill lay out exactly what happened and answer all of these questions that have been speculated about and made into tremendous issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former spy chief, said Friday the country is proud of its judicial …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":188995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-edith-m-lederer","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}