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Kushner called Jamal Khashoggi ‘a terrorist,’ book claims

In this file photo, taken on May 20, 2017, US President Donald Trump (C-R), Saudi Arabia’s then-Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner (2nd-R) are seen in a bilateral meeting at a hotel in Riyadh. (Photo by AFP)

US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has reportedly called Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi — who was murdered by the agents of the Saudi royal court last year — a “terrorist.”

According to Newsweek, US journalist Michael Wolff says in an upcoming book that Kushner said of the slain Khashoggi, “This guy was the link between certain factions in the royal family and Osama [bin Laden]. We know that. A journalist? Come on. This was a terrorist masquerading as a journalist.”

Kushner reportedly made the comment in an off-the-record conversation with a reporter. It was not clear who the reporter was.

A file photo of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (by AFP)

Khashoggi, a former advocate of the Saudi royal court who later became a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed and his body was dismembered by a Saudi hit squad after being lured into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.

Kushner, a real estate developer-turned-White House adviser, is known to have close ties with Mohammed.

The Washington Post, for which Khashoggi was a columnist, reported in November last year that the CIA had concluded that Mohammed personally ordered his killing.

Wolff’s new book, titled “Siege,” covers the second year of the Trump administration and is to be released on June 4. His first book, “Fire and Fury,” revealed incendiary insider information about the Trump White House and has sold more than four million copies.

A spokesman for Kushner denied the reporting.

“Michael Wolff never reached out to me (or the White House) for comment. The passages from the book I’ve seen attributed to Jared in the media are completely false,” Kushner’s White House spokesman Avi Berkowitz said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi regime’s human rights abuses and war on Yemen, had known former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from the early 1980s, when the latter fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and had interviewed him several times.

When bin Laden was killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011, Khashoggi reportedly said that he was once “beautiful and brave” but had “surrendered to hatred and passion.”


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