Jeddah: Talking about the killing of journalist Jamal Kashoggi, Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman told America’s president Joe Biden that Saudi Arabia acted to prevent a repeat of such mistakes. He said that the United States had also made mistakes, including the US invasion in Iraq, a Saudi minister said.
Biden asked Prince Mohammed about Kashoggi’s murder at the Saudi consulate in Instanbul in 2018.
“The President raised the issue… And the crown prince responded that this was a painful episode for Saudi Arabia and that it was a terrible mistake,” the kingdom’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al Jubair said.
He said that the accused were brought to trial and punished with prison terms.
Al Jubeir, talking to Reuters about Friday’s conversation between the two leaders, said the crown prince had made the case that trying to impose values by force on other countries could backfire.
“It has not worked when the US tried to impose values on Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, it backfired. It does not work when people try to impose values by force on other countries,” Al Jubair quoted the prince as telling Biden.
“Countries have different values and those values should be respected,” the Crown Prince told Biden.
The Crown Prince told Biden what happened with Khashoggi was ‘regrettable,’ and that Saudi Arabia has undertaken all the legal procedures in the case, from investigations to trials, to sentencing, and the implementation of the sentences.
Biden, who landed in Saudi Arabia on Friday in his first Middle East trip as president, held a summit on Saturday with six Gulf states and Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq.
“His Royal Highness mentioned to the President that mistakes like this happen in other countries and we saw a mistake like this being committed by the United States in Abu Ghraib (prison in Iraq),” Al Jubair said.
