Trump says Saudis engaged in ‘worst coverup ever’ as U.S. imposes penalties
2018-10-24 10:27:33 source：The Washington Post
October 23, 2018
ISTANBUL — President Trump said Tuesday that Saudi officials had engaged in the “worst coverup ever” after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi earlier this month, as the administration took its first concrete step to penalize Saudi Arabia, revoking visas for its agents implicated in the killing.
That initial penalty was modest, since 18 of the 21 Saudi suspects were already under arrest, and Trump said he would “leave it up to Congress” to determine how best to punish the kingdom for the killing inside its Istanbul consulate.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Tuesday labeled the killing “planned” and “brutal” and called on Saudi Arabia to extradite the detained suspects to Turkey to face justice. Erdogan’s highly anticipated comments, during a speech to his ruling party in the capital, Ankara, contradicted Saudi accounts that Khashoggi was killed when an argument inside the consulate escalated into a fistfight.
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