Washington/Riyadh: US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that America needs Saudi Arabia in the fight against terrorism, and that he did not want to walk away from the kingdom.
“You know we need Saudi Arabia in terms of our fight against all of the terrorism, everything that’s happening in Iran and other places,” Trump told Fox Business in response to questions about missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The US president said he did not want to walk away from Saudi Arabia. “They have a tremendous order, $110 billion,” he said, in reference to US arms sales to the Kingdom.
Meanwhile, Turkish Justice Minister Abdul Hamid Gul called on the public to ignore any leaked information in the case of Khashoggi. Several news outlets have released reports quoting anonymous official sources who claimed to have found breaking evidence in the case. However, no concrete evidence has surfaced indicating any information about who is behind Khashoggi’s disappearance.
Gul said the case was being “thoroughly” investigated and “results are expected to come out soon.”
The Istanbul prosecutors’ office will reveal the truth behind Khashoggi’s disappearance and whatever the international law requires will be done, he added.
A joint Saudi-Turkish tam is probing the fate of the Khashoggi who was last seen in public on October 2.
A Turkish woman who introduced herself as his fiancée, Hatice Cergiz, said that he never came out of the general consulate where he had entered in early afternoon.
The investigation team searched the consulate for about nine hours. On Wednesday, they searched the residence of the general consul, Mohammad Al Otaibi, about 300 metres away, arriving at 4.40 pm (local time) and leaving early on Thursday.
Al Otaibi was not at the residence during the search as he had left for Saudi Arabia a day earlier.
Reports relayed by an international news agency said he was relieved of his diplomatic duty and that he will be questioned. The agency quoted a popular news site, Sabq.
However, Sabq denied the report that cited it as the source for the allegations.
“The news agency lapsed into in unprofessional and unethical [behaviour] today by reporting a fake story about measures taken with the Consul of the Kingdom in Istanbul. The claim was reported by newspapers and news sites and attributed to Sabq whereas it was purposefully posted by a different website that used a design similar to the genuine Sabq news site,” Sabq said.
“It is unfortunate that the well-known news agency could fall prey to such misleading abuse and fail to cross check and verify the information in order to be a trusted source of news. The news agency rushed behind misleading sites that exploited the name of our site and passed on fake news that made it lose its credibility.”
