Bahrain Mirror: Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, underestimated the importance of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying he was not important enough to kill and that he'd never read a Khashoggi article in his life.

In a lengthy interview with the American "The Atlantic" magazine, the Saudi Crown Prince denied that he had ordered the killing of Khashoggi, saying "It hurt me and it hurt Saudi Arabia."

"I understand the anger, especially among journalists. I respect their feelings. But we also have feelings here, pain here," he added, indicating that "Khashoggi incident was the worst thing ever to happen to me, because it could have ruined all of my plans to reform the country".

The crown prince defended himself in part by asserting that Khashoggi was not important enough to kill. "I never read a Khashoggi article in my life," he said. He added that if he were to send a kill squad, he'd choose a more valuable target, and more competent assassins. 

"If that's the way we did things"-murdering authors of critical op-eds-"Khashoggi would not even be among the top 1,000 people on the list. If you're going to go for another operation like that, for another person, it's got to be professional and it's got to be one of the top 1,000." 

In the same context, the Saudi Crown Prince claimed that Saudi Arabia had punished those responsible for the murder, he said-yet comparable atrocities, such as bombings of wedding parties in Afghanistan and the torture of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, have gone unpunished.

Arabic Version