The widow of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in 2018 by Saudi agents, said on Wednesday she was “confused” after a meeting a day earlier at the White House between Mohammed bin Salman and Donald Trump, where the American president defended the Saudi crown prince.
“This really upsets me, and I’m disappointed,” Hanan Elatr Khashoggi said in an interview with AFP, stressing that President Trump was “misinformed about Jamal Khashoggi.”
“Jamal Khashoggi was a stable, courageous, transparent person and a professional journalist,” he added, while the American president on Tuesday spoke of a “very controversial” person.
Donald Trump vigorously defended the Saudi crown prince, whom he received at the White House with all due respect, saying that Mohammed bin Salman “knows nothing”. But the American secret services have shown their direct responsibility in the murder of the journalist.
Hanan Elatr Khashoggi once again said she was “shocked” to see the American president trying to “silence” an ABC journalist who asked a question about this, as well as the way her husband was presented “as if they were talking about someone else”.
Killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul
Residing in the United States, critical of Saudi power after being close to it, Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by agents from Saudi Arabia. His dismembered body was never found. The journalist’s widow, who has political asylum in the United States, confirmed she wrote to Donald Trump before the crown prince’s visit to help him get compensation but received no response.
In the message at
“Unfortunately, I got no response from them,” she said, insisting that she wanted to “find the body” of her husband to “bury him with dignity and ask for an official apology and financial compensation.”
When asked about the grandeur of the visit to Washington by “MBS,” who signed a number of lucrative contracts with the United States, she replied that her husband, “if he were there, would definitely be happy.” But “I am very disappointed to see America abandoning its values, human rights and democracy,” he added.
