Trump Defends the Killing of Washington Post Journalist Jamal Khashoggi — Here's What to Know - video Dailymotion

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00:00The brutal murder of a Washington Post journalist in the Middle East is drawing renewed attention

00:05after the topic sparked a heated exchange between President Trump and a reporter during

00:09an Oval Office meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

00:30The reporter in question, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, was killed and dismembered

00:56at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

01:01The death of the columnist, who was a fierce critic of the Saudi government, immediately

01:04drew accusations that the Saudi Crown Prince may have ordered the killing himself.

01:10So what actually happened to Jamal Khashoggi?

01:12Here's what we know.

01:14Before the dissident journalist was known for inflammatory headlines against his country's

01:18new leadership, such as Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince is acting like Putin, he was actually

01:23a Saudi royal family insider.

01:26The journalist got his start working for both English language and Arabic news outlets in

01:30the 1980s and 90s, covering the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the rise of Islamists in

01:35the Middle East, including several high-profile interviews with Osama bin Laden.

01:41Khashoggi was then able to rub shoulders with the royals as an editor for pro-government newspaper

01:45Al-Medina, but in the 2000s moved to the more progressive Al-Watan newspaper, where he was

01:52twice fired for running content that ran afoul of the country's ultra-conservative clerics.

01:58He finally broke with the country's leadership over its repressive response to the Arab Spring

02:02protests, siding with moderate Islamists.

02:06Fearing for his freedom, Khashoggi fled to the U.S. in June of 2017, where he began writing

02:12for the opinion pages of the Washington Post, using his platform in the major newspaper to

02:16criticize Prince Mohammed for jailing critics, stifling the media, and the ongoing war in Yemen.

02:23In May of 2018, he met a 36-year-old Turkish Ph.D. student at a conference,

02:28and the two fell in love and quickly became engaged, according to a Washington Post report.

02:34He bought a home for them in Istanbul, but to get married in Turkey,

02:37he needed a document showing he had divorced his previous wife.

02:41To get that, he had to go to the Saudi consulate.

02:44On October 2, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Arabian consulate

02:50in Istanbul to collect the documents, while his bride-to-be waited for him outside.

02:55She never saw him return.

02:57Outlets around the world began reporting news of his disappearance,

03:00with the Washington Post blasting from the editorial pages,

03:03where is Jamal Khashoggi?

03:05Prince Mohammed insisted to Bloomberg that the reporter had left the consulate freely that same day.

03:12However, within days, Turkish investigators came to a very different conclusion,

03:16that he was killed by a team sent from Saudi Arabia specifically for the murder,

03:20sources told the Washington Post.

03:23Turkish officials concluded the agents were acting on orders from the top of the Saudi royal court,

03:28and had dismembered Khashoggi's body with a bone saw, one of the officials told the New York Times.

03:34In December of that year, Saudi Arabia admitted for the first time

03:37that Khashoggi was killed in the country's consulate in Turkey.

03:41The Saudi public prosecutor later blamed the murder on a rogue group of Saudi operatives,

03:45who were later tried and convicted for Khashoggi's death.

03:49In a 2019 60 Minutes interview, Mohammed bin Salman denied ordering the murder,

03:54but stated he took full responsibility as the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia.

03:59In a 2021 report from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence,

04:04it assessed that the Crown Prince approved the operation.

04:07We based this assessment on the Crown Prince's control of decision-making in the kingdom,

04:11the direct involvement of a key advisor and members of Mohammed bin Salman's protective detail

04:16in the operation, and the Crown Prince's support for using violent measures

04:21to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi, the report read.

Trump Defends the Killing of Washington Post Journalist Jamal Khashoggi — Here's What to Know

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