Ties with Saudis at stake as US releases findings on killing

“This guy ... sees the world as a stage for his botched operations," said Oudh, a Gulf research director for Democracy for the Arab World Now, a rights group Khashoggi founded shortly before his murder.

The Saudi Arabia Embassy spokesman in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Saudi officials have said Khashoggi's killing was the work of rogue Saudi security and intelligence officials.

The prince said in 2019 he took “full responsibility” for the killing since it happened on his watch, but denied ordering it.

U.S. intelligence findings are coming out more than two years after Khashoggi walked hand-in-hand with his fiancee to the Saudi consulate in Turkey. He planned to pick up documents for their wedding.

The errand was recorded by surveillance cameras that tracked his route and those of his alleged killers in Istanbul in the hours leading up to his killing.

Inside the consulate, Khashoggi died at the hands of more than a dozen Saudi security and intelligence officials and others who had assembled ahead of his arrival.

A Turkish bug planted at the embassy reportedly captured the sound of a forensic saw, operated by a Saudi military colonel who was also a forensics expert, carving up Khashoggi’s body within an hour of his entering the building. The whereabouts of his remains remain unknown.

Much of the damage from the killing of Khashoggi, a gregarious and well-regarded Saudi journalist with influential supporters in the United States and around the world, has already been absorbed by the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

Once in office, Biden said he would maintain whatever scale of relations with Saudi Arabia that U.S. interests required. He also ordered an end to U.S. support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen and said he would stop the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia. He's given few details of what weapons and support he meant.

Asked how the release of the findings would affect Biden's approach toward Saudi Arabia, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that a range of options were on the table.

“There are areas where we will express concerns and leave open the option of accountability," Psaki said. “There are also areas where we will continue to work with Saudi Arabia, given the threats they face in the region.”

Congress in 2019 demanded the release of the report's findings, but the Trump administration refused. The Biden administration agreed to release a declassified version.

Saudi Arabian courts last year announced they had sentenced eight Saudi nationals to prison in Khashoggi's killing. They were not identified.