Outrage Over a Handshake Between Khashoggi Son and the Crown Prince

BEIRUT — The image of the Saudi crown prince shaking the hand of a son of the slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi stoked outrage on social media Wednesday as suspicions continue that the crown prince had a role in the killing.

Many Turkish and U.S. officials believe that the operation that ended up killing Khashoggi could not have gone ahead without the knowledge of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Khashoggi’s son Salah is a dual Saudi-American citizen and has been barred from leaving the kingdom, friends of the family say, presumably to keep his relatives who are already in the United States from speaking out about the killing.

“This photo makes me want to scream and throw up,” Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi activist living in Australia, wrote on Twitter.

The images were released late Tuesday as the kingdom was struggling to push back against the international uproar over Khashoggi’s killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Turkish officials have said he was met there by a 15-man hit squad who killed him and dismembered his body with a bone saw.

After nearly three week of denials, Saudi Arabia acknowledged last week that the team had killed Khashoggi but said that it had been acting without the knowledge of the kingdom’s leadership and had accidentally strangled Khashoggi after a fistfight.

But that story has failed to stop the damage to the kingdom’s reputation as the country’s allies have called for further explanation and as businessmen and investors have dropped out of a headline investment conference this week in Riyadh.

In a video from the conference, released by Saudi state television, the Saudi monarch, King Salman, and Crown Prince Mohammed, his son, enter an ornate room where two relatives of Khashoggi are waiting. The video has no sound, so it is unclear what was said, but the younger Khashoggi appears stone-faced when the crown prince shakes his hand.

Not all reactions to the encounter were negative.

One Twitter user under the name Turki Ibn Barak expressed condolences to the family of Khashoggi and said, “May our leadership remain strong and noble.”

But others found the handshake upsetting given the suspicions that the crown prince had a role in the killing.

“Sickening to see #Khashoggi’s oldest son Salah summoned to receive condolences from the person suspected of murdering his father,” wrote Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “Jamal told me months ago that the Saudi government is not allowing his son to leave Saudi Arabia. He is being held against his will.”