Alwaght- Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser has reportedly called slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi a “terrorist”, a soon-to-be published book reveals.
According to Newsweek, US journalist Michael Wolff in his new book Siege: Trump Under Fire says that Kushner said of 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.”
Khashoggi, a journalist critical of the Saudi regime who worked as a columnist for The Washington Post, was lured to Saudi consulate in Turkey's Istanbul, brutally killed and his body was dismembered on October 2, 2018.
Kushner reportedly made the comment in an off-the-record conversation with a reporter. It was not clear who the reporter was.
Kushner, a real estate developer-turned-White House adviser, is known to have close ties with Mohammed.
The Washington Post reported in November last year that the CIA had concluded that Mohammed personally ordered his killing.
Wolff’s new book covers the second year of the Trump administration and is to be released on 4 June. 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.”
