Jamal Khashoggi death: Saudi crown prince breaks silence on 'painful' case of killed journalist
Kingdom insists death of writer was an accident and attempts to distance crown prince from murder
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Your support makes all the difference.Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has promised that the killers of Jamal Khashoggi would be brought to justice, in his first public comments since the journalist's death sparked international condemnation.
Prince Mohammed told a major investment conference in Riyadh that Saudi Arabia and Turkey would work together "to reach results" on a joint investigation into the killing.
"The incident that happened is very painful, for all Saudis... The incident is not justifiable," the crown prince said on a discussion panel. "Justice in the end will appear."
He described cooperation between Riyadh and Ankara as "special" despite fierce criticism from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his aides.
On Tuesday, hackers hijacked the summit’s website and posted an image of the royal about to behead Khashoggi on its homepage.
Read the updates from Wednesday, as they happened
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Good morning and welcome to the latest updates from The Independent on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.
Saudi officials have now admitted the journalist was targeted in the kingdom's consulate in Turkey and a body double was on hand to aid in the cover-up.
The latest account attempts to distance the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, from the killing, even though officials linked to the ruler have been implicated.
The 33-year-old ruler is expected to give his first speech to an international audience since the killing at an investment summit in Riyadh dubbed "Davos in the Desert".
Donald Trump said Saudi Arabia's response to the killing of Khashoggi was "the worst cover-up" in history. The US has announced it would sanction Saudi officials implicated in the murder.
Two Saudi officials told the Associated Press the kingdom sent a team to Turkey, but said the men were acting on a directive issued by Saudi King Salman's predecessor, King Abdullah, to bring dissidents who had fled abroad back to the kingdom.
The officials acknowledged the plan allowed for taking Khashoggi from the consulate and questioning him at a "safe house."
When asked why such a team would include a forensics expert and a body double, the Saudi officials told the Associated Press that had the safe house option been used, the plan was for the forensic expert to wipe clean evidence Khashoggi had been at the consulate and for the body double to leave the facility to give the false impression he had left on his own.
Instead, the two officials said, the operation with Khashoggi turned violent.
They said the team included a former colleague of Khashoggi who advised him to return to the kingdom.
When that failed, the writer, by their account, asked if he was going to be kidnapped. Told he was going to be taken to a safe house, they say he started to yell for help.
That's when an unidentified person on the team applied a chokehold, which the officials said was intended only to keep Khashoggi quiet but ended up killing him instead.
The officials said the nine members of the 15-strong team who were inside the consulate at the time then panicked and made plans with a local Turkish "collaborator" to remove the body. One official said the body was rolled up in some sort of material and taken from the consulate by the collaborator.
Neither official could account for Turkey's claims Khashoggi's body was dismembered with a bone saw inside the building.
Donald Trump has said he believes Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, likely knew about the plot to kill Khashoggi. When asked whether the ruler was involved, the US president claimed: "If anyone were going to be, it would be him."
Turkey's president called for the 18 suspects detained in Saudi Arabia to be tried in Turkish courts on Tuesday.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected the idea that the men acted on their own.
"To blame such an incident on a handful of security and intelligence members would not satisfy us or the international community," he said in a speech in the country's parliament.
Saudi Arabia would not have murdered Khashoggi without American protection, Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani has said, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
"No one would imagine that in today's world and a new century that we would witness such an organised murder and a system would plan out such a heinous murder," Mr Rouhani said.
"I don't think that a country would dare commit such a crime without the protection of America."
Iran and Saudi Arabia are regional rivals and have supported opposing sides in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, and different political factions in Iraq and Lebanon.
US protection has allowed Saudi Arabia to carry out bombings against civilians in Yemen's war, Mr Rouhani said, according to IRNA.
"If there was no American protection, would the people of Yemen still have faced the same brutal bombing?" he asked.
Russia has refused to criticise Saudi Arabia in the wake of international condemnation over the murder of Khashoggi. Moscow has sought to downplay the case and mostly refused to go beyond acknowledging official Saudi statements.
Turkey's president has insisted he will not allow those responsible for the murder of Khashoggi to avoid justice, from those who ordered it to those who executed it.
"We are determined not to allow a cover-up of this murder and to make sure all those responsible - from those who ordered it to those who carried it out - will not be allowed to avoid justice," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a speech in Ankara.
He said some people had been uncomfortable with him sharing evidence regarding the investigation into the killing in his speech on Tuesday.
Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, gave a speech to the country's parliament yesterday in which he dismissed the official Saudi story of Khashoggi's murder. Patrick Cockburn, our Middle East correspondent, has said the president did not reveal everything his country's intelligence service knows about the killing in order to keep his leverage over Saudi Arabia.
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