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| Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman |
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman said in a television interview that he takes "full
responsibility" for the grisly murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
but denied allegations that he ordered it.
"This was a heinous crime," Prince Mohammed,
34, told the US TV show "60 Minutes" in an interview broadcast
Sunday. "But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially
since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government."
Asked if he ordered the murder of Khashoggi, who had
criticised him in columns for The Washington Post, Prince Mohammed, who is
widely known by his initials MBS, replied: "Absolutely not."
The slaying was "a mistake", he said.
Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey on
October 2, 2018, to collect a document that he needed to marry his Turkish
fiancée. Agents of the Saudi government killed Khashoggi inside the consulate
and apparently dismembered his body, which has never been found.
Saudi Arabia has charged 11 people in the slaying and
put them on trial, which has been held in secret. No one has yet been
convicted.
A UN report asserted that Saudi Arabia bore
responsibility for the killing and said Prince Mohammed's possible role in it
should be investigated. In Washington, Congress has said it believes Prince
Mohammed is "responsible for the murder". Saudi Arabia has long
insisted the crown prince had no involvement in an operation that included
agents who reported directly to him.
"Some think that I should know what 3 million
people working for the Saudi government do daily," the powerful heir told
"60 Minutes." ''It's impossible that the 3 million would send their
daily reports to the leader or the second-highest person in the Saudi
government."
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| Murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi |
But in an interview Thursday in New York, Khashoggi's
Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, told The Associated Press that responsibility
for Khashoggi's slaying "was not limited to the perpetrators" and
said she wanted Prince Mohammed to tell her: "Why was Jamal killed? Where
is his body? What was the motive for this murder?"
Meanwhile Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan insisted on
Monday that Turkey will keep pushing for the truth behind the killing.
In a Washington Post op-ed published Monday, Erdogan
described the journalist's killing by a Saudi hit squad as "arguably the
most influential and controversial incident of the 21st Century".
Erdogan said Turkey would keep asking: "Where are
Khashoggi's remains? Who signed the Saudi journalist's death warrant? Who dispatched
the 15 killers aboard two planes to Istanbul?"
Prince Mohammed also addressed the September 14
missile and drone attack on Saudi oil facilities. While Yemen's Iranian-allied
Houthi rebels claimed the assault, Saudi Arabia has said it was
"unquestionably sponsored by Iran".
"There is no strategic goal," he said of the
attack. "Only a fool would attack 5 percent of global supplies. The only
strategic goal is to prove that they are stupid and that is what they
did."
He urged "strong and firm action to deter
Iran", but he also claimed to support a non-military solution to the
crisis.
"If the world does not take a strong and firm
action to deter Iran, we will see further escalations that will threaten world
interests," Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the CBS program "60
Minutes".
"Oil supplies will be disrupted and oil prices
will jump to unimaginably high numbers that we haven't seen in our
lifetimes," the prince said.
The prince said a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran
would be catastrophic for the world economy.
"The region represents about 30 percent of the
world's energy supplies, about 20 percent of global trade passages, about four
percent of the world GDP. Imagine all of these three things stop," he
said.
"This means a total collapse of the global
economy, and not just Saudi Arabia or the Middle East countries." - France 24
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