WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Thursday disputed that U.S. intelligence officials had concluded that the unofficial leader of American ally Saudi Arabia ordered the killing of a U.S.-based journalist critical of the kingdom's royal family.
Citing vehement denials by the crown prince and king that they were involved, Trump said "maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place."
Critics in Congress and high-ranking officials in other countries are accusing Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons, including its influence on the world oil market.
Trump said this week that he would not impose harsher penalties on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month.
"My policy is very simple: America first, keep America great again and that's what I'm doing," Trump told reporters after a Thanksgiving Day telephone call with members of the military.
The crown prince and his father, King Salman, said they did not commit "this atrocity," Trump said.
"It's a terrible thing. I dislike it more than you do. But the fact is ... they create tremendous wealth, really tremendous jobs in their purchases and very importantly, they keep the oil price down."
American intelligence agencies have concluded that the crown prince ordered the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, according to a U.S. official familiar with the assessment. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Others familiar with the case caution that while it's likely that the crown prince was involved in the death, questions remain about the extent of his culpability.
Several lawmakers have indicated that the U.S. has no "smoking gun" that proves the crown prince was responsible. They have called on the CIA and other top intelligence agencies to share publicly what they told the president about the slaying.
"I hate the crime," Trump said while on vacation in Florida. "I hate what's done. I hate the cover-up and I will tell you this -- the crown prince hates it more than I do."
He also seemed to suggest that all U.S. allies were guilty of the same behavior.
He said the CIA "points it both ways and as I said, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But I will say very strongly that it's a very important ally and if we go by a certain standard, we won't be able to have allies with almost any country."
He also has pushed back on the idea that his refusal to punish the Saudis more will embolden other governments to go after journalists and commit other human-rights abuses.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has noted that the U.S. has imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials suspected of involvement in the killing.
"We've sanctioned 17 people -- some of them very senior in the Saudi government," Pompeo said Wednesday in a radio interview with KCMO in Kansas City, Mo. "We are going to make sure that America always stands for human rights."
Saudi prosecutors have said a 15-man team sent to Istanbul killed Khashoggi with tranquilizers and dismembered his body, which has not been found. Those findings came after Saudi authorities spent weeks denying Khashoggi had been killed in the consulate.
Some lawmakers have triggered investigations into Khashoggi's death and specifically whether the crown prince was responsible. The investigations were requested under provisions of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
The act requires the president to report back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee within 120 days -- in this case by Feb. 7 -- on whether the crown prince was responsible for an extrajudicial killing, torture or other gross violation of internationally recognized human rights against someone exercising freedom of expression and the administration's decision on whether sanctions are warranted.
Meanwhile, Denmark and Finland announced Thursday that both would halt future arms exports to Saudi Arabia, after a similar decision by neighboring Germany earlier this month.
Denmark's ban includes goods that can be used both for military and civilian purposes but is still less expansive than the German measures, which also included sales that had already been approved.
While the Nordic countries are tiny arms equipment exporters in comparison with bigger players such as the United States, Britain or France, their decision will probably exacerbate concerns within the European arms industry of a growing anti-Saudi consensus in the European Union and beyond.
A Saudi-led coalition has been accused of numerous human-rights violations in Yemen since 2015. On Wednesday, international humanitarian organization Save the Children said that 85,000 children had starved to death there since the beginning of the intervention.
Speaking on Danish television Thursday, Denmark's foreign minister, Anders Samuelsen, confirmed that the "continued worsening of the already terrible situation in Yemen and the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi" had led to the exports ban. He urged other EU members to also re-evaluate their stances.
On Thursday, Finland also stopped arms equipment exports to the United Arab Emirates, which is part of the Saudi-led coalition intervening in Yemen. In its announcement, the Finnish government explicitly cited the "alarming humanitarian situation in Yemen."
While Denmark, Finland and Germany are being celebrated by human-rights advocates for following through on their threats to halt sales to the kingdom, bigger arms exporters have pointed out that the two nations have far less to lose domestically than others. And Germany has in the past shown that it is willing to break its own promises whenever pressure by human-rights groups drops. After the current government vowed to halt all arms sales earlier this year, it approved new sales months later -- only to halt them once again after the Khashoggi killing.
Information for this article was contributed by Deb Riechmann and Jill Colvin of The Associated Press and by Josh Dawsey and Rick Noack of The Washington Post.
A Section on 11/23/2018