Saudi account of Khashoggi killing sparks outrage, calls for response in US, Britain

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News on Sunday that the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was a "huge and grave mistake" and vowed that those responsible would be punished.

He also portrayed the murder as a "rogue operation" in which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was neither involved nor aware.

Saudi Arabia’s explanations have drawn bipartisan scepticism from US politicians and outrage from opposition MPs in the UK, even as US President Donald Trump continues to support the crown prince amid a retreat from describing Saudi Arabia’s account as credible as recently as Friday.

“Obviously there’s been deception and there’s been lies,” Trump said in an interview with the Washington Post on Saturday. “Their stories are all over the place.” Still, he praised the crown prince’s leadership, saying he is “a strong person, he has very good control.” The Saudis are also major arms buyers from both the US and Britain, and Trump argues that those sales mean jobs.

Even members of the president’s own Republican Party, however, held differing views and were not hesitant about sharing them on Sunday morning TV news shows.

"Do I think he did it? Yes, I think he did it," Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said of the crown prince in an interview with CNN.

Corker, who received a classified briefing on the case on Friday, said he was waiting for investigations to be completed and hoped that Turkey would share any audio tapes of the killing of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October.

However, he made it clear that he believed the murder was directed by the prince, who has consolidated power in the world's top oil exporter and courted Trump.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he believes the crown prince is responsible. “You’ll never convince me that he didn’t do this,” Graham said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures”

Representative Peter King, a Republican from New York and member of the House Intelligence Committee, said: “What happened here was savagery, and we can’t go along with their cover story,” the Washington Post reported.

Democrats were even more prescriptive in calling for specific actions to be taken against the Saudis.

On NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Democratic Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois said the Saudi ambassador should be formally expelled from the US if an investigation reveals the crown prince’s involvement.

Representative Adam Schiff of California, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Khashoggi’s killing was “a relationship-altering event for the US and Saudi Arabia”.

On ABC News’s “This Week,” he said: "We ought to suspend military sales, we ought to suspend certain security assistance and we ought to impose sanctions on any of those that were directly involved in this murder.”

UK opposition MPs’ letter on Khashoggi, Yemen

The Guardian reported on Sunday that all five opposition parties had sent an unprecedented joint letter to UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt calling for the government to condemn Saudi Arabia’s “reckless and barbaric” behaviour to suspend arms sales pending a probe of alleged war crimes in Yemen and to support an independent investigation into Khashoggi’s fate.

The letter from the foreign affairs representatives of Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens said it was “hard to imagine what crime the Saudi government would need to commit” for the UK government to condemn it.

The UK “has continued to supply Saudi Arabia with weaponry which has been used in the devastating war in Yemen, has shamefully rolled out the red carpet for the Saudi crown prince in a state visit earlier this year, and has repeatedly excused their actions in statements before the House of Commons,” the letter said.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office replied that this view was “inaccurate,” according to the Guardian; that the UK had been active in calling for answers and a full investigation into Khashoggi’s fate, and that arms exports to Saudi Arabia had been vetted as to whether they might be used “to commit a serious International Humanitarian Law violation”.

Saudi arms deals with US

On Sunday, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said on “Fox News Sunday” that the US should curtail arms sales to Saudi Arabia because “that’s the only thing the Saudis will listen to”.

Paul said the US could exercise leverage over Saudi Arabia by cutting support for its air campaign in Yemen, as the kingdom’s planes are all American and they need US servicing and support.

He also criticised Trump’s argument that the US shouldn’t scrap a Saudi $110bn arms deal over concern for the American jobs those contracts support.

That figure is in dispute and Trump has been criticised for inflating both the value of the deal and the number of jobs it supports, the Washington Post reported.