The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 is a major point of contention between the two countries, and U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday expressed disagreement with Saudi Arabia in their account of discussions at a bilateral summit about this matter.
Despite the de facto Saudi ruler’s denials, U.S. intelligence services think Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave the order to kill Saudi-American journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Biden disputed the Saudi foreign minister’s claim that he did not hear Biden blame Mohammed bin Salman for the killing of the Washington Post columnist, a harsh critic of his native Saudi Arabia, in an interview with reporters as he arrived at the White House following his first Middle East trip as president.
The president said ‘No’ when asked if Adel al-Jubeir, the minister of state for foreign affairs, was telling the truth when he described the conversation between Biden and the crown prince.
Jubeir claimed that the crown prince, commonly known as MbS, had informed Biden that the United States had also made mistakes and that the kingdom has taken action to prevent mistakes like the assassination of Khashoggi from happening again.
The minister claimed to have ‘not heard that exact term’ from Biden accusing the crown prince in a statement to Fox News on Saturday.
A Saudi official who was there at the meeting claimed that the conversation did not go as President Biden had stated and that there had been ‘an informal manner’ to address Khashoggi prior to the formal meeting.
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