SHAH ALAM, Oct 22 — Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has condemned the killing of Wall Street Journal journalist Jamal Khashoggi, calling it a terrible form of cruelty.
“This is a form of terrible cruelty, where to us it is unacceptable.
“We all have people we do not like, but we cannot be going around and killing them if we don’t like them,” he said.
Dr Mahathir said this in response to a question posed to him during a forum at the Karangkraf Hall moderated by Tan Sri Johan Jaafar, which was organised by Malay daily Sinar Harian this afternoon.
Khashoggi, a Saudi national and US resident who became increasingly critical of powerful Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Salman, has not been seen since he walked into the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate to sort out marriage paperwork on October 2.
After weeks of denying knowledge of his fate, Saudi officials said the prominent journalist was killed in a “rogue operation”.
“There were people in the past who also didn’t like me.
“Thankfully, in our country we don’t have this sort of cruelty, and we don’t support such actions as killing someone who is a critic of the government,” he said.
Latest reports stated that at least five Turkish employees of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul have given their statements as witnesses under an investigation into Kashoggi’s killing.
