Mohammed bin Salman reportedly accused President Joe Biden of hypocrisy during their meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Friday by asking why the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi seemed to matter more to him than the fatal shooting of Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh.
Biden, who said during his campaign for the presidency in 2019 that Khashoggi had been “murdered and dismembered … I believe on the order of the crown prince,” told reporters that he had confronted Crown Prince Mohammed over the killing of the dissident Saudi journalist at the start of their meeting this week.
But according to a Saudi official who spoke to the state broadcaster Al Arabiya, the prince contrasted Biden’s concern about the brutal murder of Khashoggi, a long-term resident of the U.S., with his failure to hold Israel’s government accountable for the killing of Abu Akleh, an American citizen who was shot — according to witnesses and visual investigations — from an Israeli military convoy.
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Saudi state television was also careful to keep viewers inside the repressive kingdom from hearing Biden reiterate the CIA conclusion that the crown prince had ordered the murder of Khashoggi by a Saudi hit squad in Turkey in 2018.
When Biden was asked during a news conference in Jeddah on Friday night how Crown Prince Mohammed had responded to his comments about Khashoggi, Al Arabiya’s sister station Al Hadath cut away from its live broadcast so abruptly that its studio anchor and control room seemed to be caught off guard. After viewers heard Biden begin, “He basically said that he was not personally resp—” the picture jumped back to a startled anchor who took four seconds to start speaking. Then when she did, her mic was not on.
