Turkey on Wednesday blasted President Trump’s statement about slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi as “comic,” denouncing the president for contradicting a CIA report that indicated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered The Washington Post contributor’s death.
“Yesterday’s statement is a comic statement,” Numan Kurtulmus, the deputy chairman of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s party, told state broadcaster TRT Haber, according to Reuters.
{mosads}“It is not possible for an intelligence agency such as the CIA, which even knows the color of the fur on the cat walking around the Saudi consulate’s garden … to not know who gave this order,” Kurtulmus added. “This is not credible either for U.S. public opinion or the world public opinion.”
“Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said, adding that “we may never know” who was responsible.
Turkey has slowly released information about the assassination over the past two months, saying the Saudi agents who killed Khashoggi were likely working on orders from Riyadh.
The crown prince has unequivocally denied involvement in the operation, though experts and officials have said it would have been difficult to perform a high-level operation in the Saudi consulate without his knowledge.