Hatice Cengiz said an interview on Turkish television channel HaberTurk that she won't take up Tump's offer to visit the White House. Photo / AP
Hatice Cengiz said an interview on Turkish television channel HaberTurk that she won't take up Tump's offer to visit the White House. Photo / AP
Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée says she will not take President Trump up on his offer to visit the White House, unless his administration acts on the journalist's brutal murder.
In an interview with Turkish television station Haber Turk, the Saudi columnist's fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, said, "The statements Trump made in the first days around his invite and the statements he made afterward opposed each other. They were simply statements to gain public sympathy.
"I do not think of going to the United States," she explained, according to CNN. "Whether I will go or not will depend on the formation of conscience."
Hatice Cengiz reacts during a memorial event for her fiancee Jamal Khashoggi. Photo / AP
President Trump has said he will follow Congress' lead on potential punishing actions for the US ally that has committed to a defence deal with American companies that's could be more than $100 billion.
Congress is out of session until after the mid-term elections, with lawmakers signalling that they will formally consider sanctions when they return to Washington.
Trump has asked that sanctions do not stand in the way of the agreement to purchase military equipment from the United States. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have suggested that the US end its financial support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, instead.
The president waited to endorse sanctions against Saudi Arabia at all until he was fully convinced that Khashoggi had died inside the nation's Istanbul consulate.
He said repeatedly that the punishment for assassinating the journalist "will have to be very severe," because his reported kill by dismemberment is "bad, bad stuff."
Activists, protesting the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, hold a candlelight vigil outside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul. Photo / AP
Trump has not said what he thinks the US should do in response, aside from the immediate revocation of the visas of the culprits. He promised "certain recommendations" that have been limited so far to a plea to honour the defence contracts.
The Saudi Arabian crown prince and his elderly father claim that they did not direct the journalist's murder. They maintain that the 15-person team was sent to Turkey to retrieve the dissident and a fight broke out. Trump has suggested that he does not believe their version of events.
Trump said in his first extensive comments on the topic that the "cover-up" by had been poorly executed by Saudi Arabia, which had denied for weeks that it was involved in Khashoggi's murder before coming clean.
Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman claims he did not direct the murder. Photo / AP
"They had a very bad original concept, it was carried out poorly and the cover-up was the worst in the history of cover-ups," he said.
He clarified later that the murder and cover-up should have never happened.
"Whoever thought of that idea, I think is in big trouble. And they should be in big trouble," he said.
As the weeks-long saga continued, the president said that Khashoggi's "wife" could visit the White House to visit with his own wife Melania Trump. He apparently meant Cengiz.
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the nation's Istanbul consulate. Photo / AP
She initially said that she would be interested in taking him up on the offer - if the US "makes a genuine contribution to the efforts to reveal what happened inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul that day, I will consider accepting his invitation."
In the Haber Turk interview, she said those responsible for his murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul need to be punished for their "savagery," and revealed that she had not received a condolence call from Saudi officials.
She told Turkish television channel HaberTurk that she continually asks herself questions about that day and the events leading up to their visit to the consulate to pick up necessary documents for their upcoming nuptials.
"I found myself in a darkness I cannot express," she said on Friday. "I demand that all those involved in this savagery from the highest to the lowest levels are punished and brought to justice."
