RIYADH - Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has admitted responsibility for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, while Saudi officials refused to give information on the whereabouts of the accused.

The documentary deals with the rise of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his sentence a year after Khashoggi's murder inside his country's consulate in Istanbul.

In the documentary, journalist Martin Smith published for the first time a transcript of an unpublished meeting with the Saudi crown prince in a motorsport last December, asking him for his responsibility for Khashoggi's death.

Responsibility and denied
In this meeting, bin Salman said that he was responsible for the assassination of Khashoggi by virtue of his position as crown prince, although he denied that he had ordered or knew about this crime before it happened.

Bin Salman: It happened under my administration, I take all the responsibility because it happened under my administration. I take it seriously. I don't want to tell you no, I didn't do it or I did it or anything else, these are just words.

Journalist: How can crime happen without your knowledge?

Bin Salman: Accidents happen, can you imagine? We have twenty million people, we have three million government employees. Neither Google nor a supercomputer to monitor more than three million people.

Journalist: Can they use one of your planes?

Bin Salman: I have officials and ministers to follow things, and they are responsible, they have the authority to do so.

Journalist: But during the operation Qahtani was sending you emails?

Bin Salman: Yes, he sends me messages on a daily basis.

Error and trial
The investigator also confronted former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal with previous statements saying that the killing of Khashoggi took place by mistake. Al-Faisal responded that it was the Saudi leadership that said it was a mistake.

Journalist: How do you say it was a mistake?

Turki Al-Faisal: Because our leadership said it was, and our leaders have never lied to us.

Journalist: There were many statements immediately after Khashoggi's murder that proved to be wrong, were lies.

Turki al-Faisal: It was based on these wrong data and they will be brought to trial and face their fate.

Al-Jubeir refused to disclose the whereabouts of those accused of killing Khashoggi (Al-Jazeera)

Questions and evade
Saudi Arabia's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, evaded answering a question by the BBC's investigator about the whereabouts of Saud al-Qahtani, an adviser to the crown prince and one of those charged with involvement in Khashoggi's murder. "It is the Saudi attorney general who is talking about it," Jubeir said.

The following dialogue took place:

Journalist: You say you did not know that the people involved in the killing of Khashoggi were close to the Crown Prince at the time I said this?

Al-Jubeir: There are many people close to the Crown Prince and surrounded him and take pictures with him.

Journalist: But Al-Qahtani was not just one of many people.

Al-Jubeir: You ask many questions ...

Journalist: He was very close to the Crown Prince. where is he now?

Al-Jubeir: You have to ask the prosecutor.

Journalist: The prosecutor did not respond to us.

Al-Jubeir: So you have to speak again.

Also in the documentary, a clip of Jamal Khashoggi speaking to Martin Smith was shown before an interview began after the Saudi journalist moved to Washington.

The clip is filmed, but Khashoggi was speaking personally ahead of Smith's official interview about his situation. "Simply what I'm doing now is just rearranging my life. I don't want to be an opponent, but at the same time I don't want to go home and be silent again," he said. And at the same time may be prevented from traveling. "

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has never spoken publicly about Khashoggi's murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, and the CIA and some Western governments have said he ordered the killing, but Saudi officials say he Has no role in crime.

Horrible crime
The crime sparked a worldwide outcry, tarnished the crown prince's reputation and jeopardized plans to diversify the world's largest oil exporter and open up Saudi society; the prince has not visited the United States or Europe since.

After statements initially denied, the Saudi official blamed Khashoggi for the killing of a group of workers she said had acted spontaneously.

The prosecutor said the then deputy chief of the intelligence service had ordered Khashoggi's return to Saudi Arabia, but the head of his team ordered him to be killed after negotiations to return him failed.

He also reported that Saud al-Qahtani, a former senior adviser to the royal court, briefed the team in charge of bringing Khashoggi on his activities before the operation.