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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Elsewhere, the Czech foreign minister has said one of the country's diplomat's are to be withdrawn from its embassy in Saudi Arabia in response to the Khashoggi case.
Saudi Arabia's crown prince is now talking about his country's economic reforms. He says he wants the kingdom to become "the new Europe in the Middle East". He also says his "war" is restoring the Middle East to its past glory, without mentioning the Yemen conflict.
Prince Mohammed received a standing ovation for the comment.
Over 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen's civil war, which has displaced 2 million more and helped spawn a cholera epidemic. Saudi-led air strikes have struck medical clinics and markets, killing large numbers of civilians and damaging vital infrastructure.
The crown prince has joked about Lebanese ex-PM Saad al-Hariri being "kidnapped", saying he would stay in the kingdom for two days.
Mohammed bin Salman said Hariri "will be here for two days, so I hope you don't spread rumours that he was kidnapped". The audience at the Future Investment Initiative laughed and applauded, AP reported.
Last November, Hariri abruptly resigned after spending more than a week in Riyadh. Lebanese officials and politicians close to Hariri claimed at the time that Saudi Arabia coerced him to resign, dictated his statement and held him under house arrest. He has been on other trips to Saudi Arabia since.
Ben Chu, our Economics Editor, is in the hall of the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh. He says:
There was a clear effort from the organisers to ensure that the hall in the conference centre was entirely full. The audience seemed to be packed with local loyalists for the crown prince. They stood up en masse when he appeared and seemed determined to applaud every defiant remark and laugh heartily at every quip.
Foreign business leaders in the hall were keeping a low profile. Many refused to talk about the Khasshogi affair. One said: "It's not a good situation if the facts are as they seem." One wealth manager said he expected outward flows of money from wealthy Saudis to slow down in the wake of the Khasshogi killing. Local banks are going to be taking a look at these flows, asking "Is this person moving money out of the country so they can be a dissident abroad? That will probably deter people."
The Saudi crown prince's panel was preceded by an interview in the main conference hall with the Senegalese President Maky Sall. The interviewer tentatively broached the issue of political oppression in the African country, in particular the jailing of the (unrelated) opposition leader Khalifa Sall. The President's response was essentially to claim "fake news": “You don’t have to believe everything you hear in the media. Senegal is a model of democratic government in Africa and the world. We don’t have any attempt at exclusion whoever they are, including the persons you’ve mentioned. These are my people and they’ve put their trust in me.”
That is it for today's live coverage of the fallout from the death of Jamal Khashoggi. Check back here for more from our team of correspondents across the region.
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