New Delhi:
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has reportedly taken the responsibility of journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder. According to reports, few months after Khashoggi's killing, the Saudi Crown Prince had told a US television that the murder happened "under his watch" but he didn't have any prior knowledge about the incident.
"I get all the responsibility, because it happened under my watch," Prince Mohammed bin Salman told a reporter in December 2018 and his quotes were released ahead of a new PBS documentary to be aired next week.
Khashoggi, a US-based writer who annoyed the prince through critical columns in The Washington Post, was strangled to death on October 2, 2018 and dismembered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to handle wedding paperwork, according to US and Turkish officials.
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After having denied the murder, Saudi Arabia said the operation was carried out by agents who were out of control. A trial of 11 suspects opened earlier this year in Saudi Arabia. But much of the case remains shrouded, beginning with the role of country’s powerful crown prince and de facto ruler Salman.
When asked how could he not known about the murder, the heir to the Gulf kingdom's throne said: "We have 20 million people. We have three million government employees." Responding to the question that the team who killed Khashoggi took one of the royal planes to Istanbul, "I have officials, ministers to follow things, and they're responsible, they have the authority to do that."
The crown prince, however, denied his direct role. But a United Naitons human rights expert's report had claimed that there were enough "credible evidence" that links Mohammed bin Salman to the murder and then a cover-up.
