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Full transcript of Saudi crown prince CBS interview

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaks with correspondent Norah O'Donnell during an interview on Tuesday with the CBS program "60 Minutes," in Saudi Arabia. (60MINUTES/Handout via Reuters)
Updated 30 September 2019
Arab News
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Full transcript of Saudi crown prince CBS interview

  • The wide-ranging interview was conducted with Norah O’Donnell, the anchor of CBS Evening News
  • The crown prince discussed the Jamal Khashoggi case, the war in Yemen and the global threat from Iran
Updated 30 September 2019
Arab News

Norah O'Donnell: Did you order the murder of Jamal Khashoggi?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Absolutely not. This was a heinous crime. But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.

Norah O'Donnell: What does that mean that you take responsibility?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: When a crime is committed against a Saudi citizen by officials, working for the Saudi government, as a leader I must take responsibility. This was a mistake. And I must take all actions to avoid such a thing in the future.

Norah O'Donnell: The world wants the answer to this question. How did you not know about this operation?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Some think that I should know what three million people working for the Saudi government do daily? It's impossible that the three million would send their daily reports to the leader or the second highest person in the Saudi government.

Norah O'Donnell: Two of your closest advisors who are accused of orchestrating this plot were fired by the king, removed from your inner circle. The question is, how could you not know if this was carried out by people who are close to you?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Today the investigations are being carried out. And once charges are proven against someone, regardless of their rank, it will be taken to court, no exception made.

Norah O'Donnell: I've read what the Saudi prosecutor has said about those that are charged in this murder. And it's gruesome, the details. When you heard that people close to you and in your government carried out such a grisly murder, and that the American government thinks that you ordered it, what did you think?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: I believe what you mentioned is not correct. There isn't an official statement announced by the American government in this regard. There isn't clear information or evidence that someone close to me did something to that effect. There are charges and they're being investigated. But again you cannot imagine the pain that we suffered, especially as the Saudi government, from a crime such as this one.

Norah O'Donnell: The CIA has concluded with medium to high confidence that you personally targeted Khashoggi and you probably ordered his death.

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: I hope this information to be brought forward. If there is any such information that charges me, I hope it is brought forward publicly.

Norah O'Donnell: What kind of threat is a newspaper columnist to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that he would deserve to be brutally murdered?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: There is no threat from any journalist. The threat to Saudi Arabia is from such actions against a Saudi journalist. This heinous crime, that took place in a Saudi consulate.

Norah O'Donnell: I spoke with a prominent U.S. senator before I came here. And he said because of what happened with Jamal Khashoggi and what's happened in Yemen that in his words there's not a lot of good will around here in Congress for Saudi Arabia. How much has it hurt the relationship?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: The relationship is much larger than that and this is a heinous incident and painful to all of us. Our role is to work day and night to overcome this and to make sure our future is much better than anything that happened in the past.

 

 

Norah O'Donnell: This attack hit the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry. Were you blindsided?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: I might disagree with you. This attack didn't hit the heart of the Saudi energy industry, but rather the heart of the global energy industry. It disrupted 5.5% of the world's energy needs, the needs of the U.S. and China and the whole world.

Norah O'Donnell: The kingdom is the world's number one importer of arms, of military equipment; billions of dollars spent on equipment. How could it not prevent an attack like this?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Saudi Arabia is almost the size of a continent, it is bigger than all of Western Europe. We have 360 degrees of threats. It's challenging to cover all of this fully.

Norah O'Donnell: What do you think was the strategic reason that Iran struck Aramco?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: I believe it's stupidity. There is no strategic goal. Only a fool would attack 5% of global supplies. The only strategic goal is to prove that they are stupid and that is what they did.

Norah O'Donnell: Secretary Mike Pompeo has called what Iran did in his words, "an act of war." Was it an act of war?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Of course. Yes.

Norah O'Donnell: What kind of effect would a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran have on the region?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: The region represents about 30% of the world's energy supplies, about 20% of global trade passages, about 4% of the world GDP. Imagine all of these three things stop. This means a total collapse of the global economy, and not just Saudi Arabia or the Middle East countries.

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: If the world does not take a strong and firm action to deter Iran, we will see further escalations that will threaten world interests. Oil supplies will be disrupted and oil prices will jump to unimaginably high numbers that we haven't seen in our lifetimes.

Norah O'Donnell: Does it have to be a military response?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: I hope not.

Norah O'Donnell: Why not?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Because the political and peaceful solution is much better than the military one.

Norah O'Donnell: Do you think that President Trump should sit down with President Rouhani and craft a new deal?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Absolutely. This is what President Trump is asking for, this is what we all ask for. However, it is the Iranians who don't want to sit at the table.

Norah O'Donnell: It is called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. What's the solution?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: First, if Iran stops its support of the Houthi militia, the political solution will be much easier. Today we open all initiatives for a political solution in Yemen. We hope this happens today rather than tomorrow.

Norah O'Donnell: You're saying tonight that you want to negotiate an end to the war in Yemen?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: We are doing this every day. But we try to turn this discussion into an actual implementation on the ground, and the Houthis a few days ago announced a ceasefire, from their side, we consider it a positive step to push for more serious and active political dialogue.

Norah O'Donnell: Why, after five years, are you optimistic tonight that a ceasefire could hold, that could lead to an end to the war in Yemen?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: As a leader, I must always be optimistic every day. If I'm a pessimist, I should leave my post and work somewhere else.

Norah O'Donnell: There are about a dozen female activists that have been detained for more than a year. Why were they put in jail?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Saudi Arabia is a country governed by laws. Some of these laws I might disagree with personally, but as long as they are now existing laws, they must be respected, until they are reformed.

Norah O'Donnell: Is it time to let her (female activist Loujain Al-Hathloul) go?

 

 

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: This decision is not up to me. It's up to the public prosecutor, and it's an independent public prosecutor.

Norah O'Donnell: Her family says that she has been tortured in prison. Is that right?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: If this is correct, it is very heinous. Islam forbids torture. The Saudi laws forbid torture. Human conscience forbids torture. And I will personally follow up on this matter.

Norah O'Donnell: You will personally follow up on it?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Without a doubt.

Norah O'Donnell: Publicly you have pledged to change Saudi Arabia, to transform the economy, to talk about a moderate Islam, to allow women to have more rights. Yet there is a crackdown and a jailing of women who raise issues about things that need to change in Saudi Arabia. That is the perception, that you do not support women's rights and human rights and that these are concrete examples of women who have been jailed.

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: This perception pains me. It pains me when some people look at the picture from a very narrow angle. I hope that everybody comes to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and sees the reality, and meets women and Saudi citizens, and judges for themselves.

Norah O'Donnell: What lessons have you learned? And have you made mistakes?

Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: Even prophets made mistakes. So how come we, as humans, expect not to make mistakes? The important thing is that we learn from these mistakes and not repeat them.

Topics: CBS Cronw Prince Mohammed bin Salman Jamal Khashoggi

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Palestinian TV says Israeli strike kills 5 journalists in Gaza

Updated 26 December 2024
AFP
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Palestinian TV says Israeli strike kills 5 journalists in Gaza

  • The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East arm said the organization was devastated
Updated 26 December 2024
AFP

GAZA: A Palestinian TV channel affiliated with a militant group said five of its journalists were killed Thursday in an Israeli strike on their vehicle in Gaza, with Israel’s military saying it had targeted a “terrorist cell.”
A missile hit the journalists’ broadcast truck as it was parked in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to a statement from their employer, Al-Quds Today.
It is affiliated with Islamic Jihad, whose militants have fought alongside Hamas in the Gaza Strip and took part in the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.
The channel identified the five staffers as Faisal Abu Al-Qumsan, Ayman Al-Jadi, Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed Al-Lada’a.
They were killed “while performing their journalistic and humanitarian duty,” the statement said.
“We affirm our commitment to continue our resistant media message,” it added.
The Israeli military said in its own statement that it had conducted “a precise strike on a vehicle with an Islamic Jihad terrorist cell inside in the area of Nuseirat.”
It added that “prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
According to witnesses in Nuseirat, a missile fired by an Israeli aircraft hit the broadcast vehicle, which was parked outside Al-Awda Hospital, setting the vehicle on fire and killing those inside.
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East arm said the organization was “devastated by the reports that five journalists and media workers were killed inside their broadcasting vehicle by an Israeli strike.”
“Journalists are civilians and must always be protected,” it added in a statement on social media.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said last week that more than 190 journalists had been killed and at least 400 injured since the start of the war in Gaza.
It was triggered by the Hamas-led October 7 attack last year, which resulted in 1,208 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,361 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.

Topics: War on Gaza

Palestinian Authority clashes with Al Jazeera over Jenin coverage

Updated 25 December 2024
Reuters
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Palestinian Authority clashes with Al Jazeera over Jenin coverage

  • Palestinian Authority security forces have battled Islamist fighters in Jenin, as they try to control one of the historic centers of militancy in the West Bank ahead of a likely shakeout in Palestinian politics after the Gaza war
Updated 25 December 2024
Reuters

JERUSALEM: Al Jazeera television has clashed with the Palestinian Authority over its coverage of the weeks-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
Fatah, the faction which controls the Palestinian Authority, condemned the Qatari-headquartered network, which has reported extensively on the clashes in Jenin, saying it was sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular.” It encouraged Palestinians not to cooperate with the network.
Israel closed down Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel in May, saying it threatened national security. In September, it ordered the network’s bureau in Ramallah, to close for 45 days after an intelligence assessment that the offices were being used to support terrorist activities.
“Al Jazeera has successfully maintained its professionalism throughout its coverage of the unfolding events in Jenin,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.
Palestinian Authority security forces have battled Islamist fighters in Jenin, as they try to control one of the historic centers of militancy in the West Bank ahead of a likely shakeout in Palestinian politics after the Gaza war.
Forces of the PA, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, moved into Jenin in early December, clashing daily with fighters from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of which are supported by Iran.
The standoff has fueled bitter anger on both sides, deepening the divisions which have long existed between the Palestinian factions and their supporters.
Al Jazeera said its broadcasts fairly presented the views of both sides.
“The voices of both the Palestinian resistance and the Spokesperson of the Palestinian National Security Forces have always been present on Al Jazeera’s screens,” Al Jazeera said.
 

 

Topics: Palestine Gaza US Al Jazeera

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‘Like a dream’: AFP photographer’s return to Syria

Syrian AFP photographer Sameer Al-Doumy talks with people from his old neighborhood in the city of Douma near Damascus.
Updated 25 December 2024
AFP
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‘Like a dream’: AFP photographer’s return to Syria

  • “We didn’t dare to imagine that Assad could fall because his presence was so anchored in us,” said Al-Doumy
  • Award-winning photographer has spent the last few years covering migrant crisis for AFP’s Lille bureau in northern France
Updated 25 December 2024
AFP

DOUMA: AFP photographer Sameer Al-Doumy never dreamed he would be able to return to the hometown in Syria that he escaped through a tunnel seven years ago after it was besieged by Bashar Assad’s forces.
Douma, once a militant stronghold near Damascus, suffered terribly for its defiance of the former regime, and was the victim of a particularly horrific chemical weapons attack in 2018.
“It is like a dream for me today to find myself back here,” he said.
“The revolution was a dream, getting out of a besieged town and of Syria was a dream, as it is now being able to go back.
“We didn’t dare to imagine that Assad could fall because his presence was so anchored in us,” said the 26-year-old.
“My biggest dream was to return to Syria at a moment like this after 13 years of war, just as it was my biggest dream in 2017 to leave for a new life,” said the award-winning photographer who has spent the last few years covering the migrant crisis for AFP’s Lille bureau in northern France.
“I left when I was 19,” said Sameer, all of whose immediate family are in exile, apart from his sister.
“This is my home, all my memories are here, my childhood, my adolescence. I spent my life in Douma in this house my family had to flee and where my cousin now lives.
“The house hasn’t changed, although the top floor was destroyed in the bombardments.
“The sitting room is still the same, my father’s beloved library hasn’t changed. He would settle down there every morning to read the books that he had collected over the years — it was more important to him than his children.
“I went looking for my childhood stuff that my mother kept for me but I could not find it. I don’t know if it exists anymore.
“I haven’t found any comfort here, perhaps because I haven’t found anyone from my family or people I was close to. Some have left the country and others were killed or have disappeared.
“People have been through so much over the last 13 years, from the peaceful protests of the revolution, to the war and the siege and then being forced into exile.
“My memories are here but they are associated with the war which started when I was 13. What I lived through was hard, and what got me through was my family and friends, and they are no longer here.
“The town has changed. I remember the bombed buildings, the rubble. Today life has gone back to a kind of normal as the town waits for people to return.”
Douma was besieged by Assad’s forces from the end of 2012, with Washington blaming his forces for a chemical attack in the region that left more than 1,400 people dead the following year.
Sameer’s career as a photojournalist began when he and his brothers began taking photos of what was happening around them.
“After the schools closed I started to go out filming the protests with my brothers here in front of the main mosque, where the first demonstration in Douma was held after Friday prayers, and where the first funerals of the victims were also held.
“I set up my camera on the first floor of a building which overlooks the mosque and then changed my clothes afterwards so I would not be recognized and arrested. Filming the protests was banned.
“When the security forces attacked, I would take the SIM card out of my phone and the memory card out of my camera and put them in my mouth.”
That way he could swallow them if he was caught.
In May 2017, Sameer fled through a tunnel dug by the militants and eventually found himself in Idlib with former fighters and their families.
“I took the name Sameer Al-Doumy (Sameer from Douma) to affirm that I belonged somewhere,” even though he was exiled, he said. “I stopped using my first name, Motassem, to protect my family living in Damascus.
“In France I have a happy and stable life. I have a family, friends and a job. But I am not rooted to any particular place. When I went back to Syria, I felt I had a country.
“When you are abroad, you get used to the word ‘refugee’ and you get on with your life and make a big effort to integrate in a new society. But your country remains the place that accepts you as you are. You don’t have to prove anything.
“When I left Syria, I never thought one day I would be able to return. When the news broke, I couldn’t believe it. It was impossible Assad could fall. Lots of people are still in shock and are afraid. It is hard to get your head around how a regime that filled people with so much fear could collapse.
“When I returned to the Al-Midan district of Damascus (which had long resisted the regime), I could not stop myself crying.
“I am sad not to be with my loved ones. But I know they will return, even if it takes a while.
“My dream now is that one day we will all come together again in Syria.”

Topics: Fall of Assad Syria

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Rights group condemns Sudan’s RSF for journalist’s ‘heinous’ killing

Updated 24 December 2024
Arab News
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Rights group condemns Sudan’s RSF for journalist’s ‘heinous’ killing

  • Hanan Adam and her brother died during an attack on their home in Wad Al-Asha
Updated 24 December 2024
Arab News

The International Federation of Journalists has condemned the killing of Sudanese journalist Hanan Adam by the Rapid Support Forces, describing it as a “heinous” crime.

The media rights group called for urgent action to address the escalating climate of fear and violence against journalists in Sudan.

Adam, who worked for the Ministry of Culture and Information in Gezira state and was a correspondent for Al-Maidan, the newspaper of the Sudanese Communist Party, was killed alongside her brother, Youssef Adam, during an RSF attack on their home in Wad Al-Asha on Dec. 8.

“We mourn the loss of our colleague, Hanan Adam, and her brother Youssef, and extend our deepest condolences to the family,” IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said in a statement on Tuesday.

“The IFJ calls on the Sudanese government to launch an investigation and take concrete action to end the climate of fear and violence that journalists endure in the country.”

Her employer, Al-Maidan newspaper, released a statement on Facebook mourning Adam’s death, highlighting her dedication to journalism armed with “only paper and pen.”

Adam is the sixth journalist killed in Sudan this year, making it the deadliest country for media professionals in Africa in 2024.

The RSF has been directly implicated in the deaths of at least five journalists since the conflict erupted in April 2023, cementing its reputation for targeting members of the press and media workers.

The IFJ’s call for justice comes amid growing international scrutiny of the RSF and the deteriorating safety of journalists in Sudan with the country mired in a conflict fueled by a power struggle between rival generals.

 

Topics: Sudan Sudan Unrest rapid support forces (RSF) journalist

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Iran lifts ban on WhatsApp and Google Play, state media says

Updated 24 December 2024
Reuters
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Iran lifts ban on WhatsApp and Google Play, state media says

  • Most of US-based social media remain blocked
Updated 24 December 2024
Reuters

DUBAI: Iranian authorities have lifted a ban on Meta’s instant messaging platform WhatsApp and Google Play as a first step to scale back Internet restrictions, Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.
The Islamic Republic has some of the strictest controls on Internet access in the world, but its blocks on US-based social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are routinely bypassed by tech-savvy Iranians using virtual private networks.
“A positive majority vote has been reached to lift limitations on access to some popular foreign platforms such as WhatsApp and Google Play,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency said on Tuesday, referring to a meeting on the matter headed by President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“Today the first step in removing Internet limitations... has been taken,” IRNA cited Iran’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology Sattar Hashemi as saying.
Social media platforms were widely used in anti-government protests in Iran.
In September the United States called on Big Tech to help evade online censorship in countries that heavily sensor the Internet, including Iran.

Topics: Iran Meta WhatsApp Google

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