The widow of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Monday responded to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who in his new book dismissed what he called “faux outrage” surrounding her husband’s death.
In an interview with NBC News, Hanan Elatr said she is committed “to silence all of these people who publish books, disparage my husband and collect money from it.”
“Whatever he [Pompeo] mentions about my husband, he doesn’t know my husband. He should be silent and shut up the lies about my husband,” she said. “It is such bad information and the wrong information. … This is not acceptable.”
Pompeo, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, wrote about Elatr’s husband in his new book, titled “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” slated to be released on Tuesday.
In it, Pompeo sharply criticizes the media’s coverage of Khashoggi’s killing, saying that outlets portrayed him as “a Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward” and referred to the aftermath of his death as “faux outrage … fueled by the media,” according to The Guardian.
“In truth, Khashoggi was an activist who had supported the losing team in a recent fight for the throne … unhappy with being exiled,” Pompeo wrote in his book.
Pompeo also wrote in his book that Khashoggi’s murder was “ugly” but not “surprising.”
Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, was brutally murdered in 2018 at a Saudi Embassy in Turkey. U.S. intelligence has determined that Khashoggi’s killing was an assassination approved by Saudi leaders.