Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017 vowed to use a “bullet” on Jamal Khashoggi unless the journalist who was allegedly killed by Saudi agents last year stopped criticising the regime in Riyadh, according to The New York Times.
The newspaper said US intelligence agencies had intercepted communications between Prince Mohammed and a top aide, in which the de facto Saudi ruler had issued the threat about the journalist shortly before he started writing columns for The Washington Post.
The development will add to suspicions that the prince ordered the killing — a charge Riyadh strongly denies.
The CIA last year concluded that Prince Mohammed had personally ordered the killing. Following a briefing from the agency last year, Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican senator, said there was “zero chance” that the killing had occurred without the crown prince’s knowledge. He said there was not a “smoking gun”, but instead a “smoking saw”.
The New York Times said the conversation between Prince Mohammed and his aide, Turki Aldakhil, emerged as US intelligence agencies search through years of intercepts of communications — phone conversations and texts — involving the prince. The newspaper said the September 2017 conversation occurred shortly before Khashoggi started writing for the Post and as Riyadh became more concerned about his criticisms.
Mr Aldakhil told the newspaper that the allegations were “categorically false”. In a statement, he said: “They appear to be a continuation of various efforts by different parties to connect His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to this horrific crime. These efforts will prove futile.”
A well-known journalist and broadcaster in Saudi Arabia, Mr Aldakhil is a former general manager of Al Arabiya, a news network controlled by the government, and is a media aide to the crown prince. He wrote an article in Al Arabiya last October warning of “economic disaster that would rock the entire world” if sanctions were imposed on the kingdom because of the Khashoggi killing.
The New York Times also said that Prince Mohammed had rebuked another aide, Saud al-Qahtani, who had warned him that any action taken against Khashoggi would be risky because of the international reaction.
Riyadh has blamed the journalist’s death on 11 agents alleged to have gone rogue, who have been put on trial in what is widely seen as an attempt by the oil-rich kingdom to deflect criticism from its young leader. The Saudi attorney-general has previously identified Mr Qahtani as being involved in the killing.
The revelation came as a bipartisan group of US senators introduced legislation intended to hold Riyadh accountable for the killing, which occurred at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October. Khashoggi was strangled and then his body was dismembered by a bone saw.
“Seeing as the Trump administration has no intention of insisting on full accountability for Mr Khashoggi’s murderers, it is time for Congress to step in and impose real consequences to fundamentally re-examine our relationship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and with the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen,” Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in introducing the legislation on Thursday.
Mr Menendez was joined by several Democrats — including Chris Murphy from Connecticut and Jack Reed from Rhode Island — in addition to a handful of Republicans who included Susan Collins from Maine, Todd Young from Indiana and Mr Graham, who has been a fierce critic of Riyadh.
The legislation, which would bar some arms sales to Saudi Arabia, comes as a deadline approaches for Donald Trump’s administration to determine if Prince Mohammed was responsible for the killing. But the US president has personally shown little interest in determining the circumstances surrounding the death of Khashoggi.
In a move that was intended to deliver a blunt message to Riyadh and Mr Trump last year, the Senate voted unanimously to pass a resolution that said the crown prince was “responsible” for the killing.
