SHAH ALAM – Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said, killing someone who is a critic of the government or who we do not like is a “terrible cruelty” and “unacceptable”.
“We all have people we do not like, but we cannot be going around and killing them if we don’t like them,”
“This is a form of terrible cruelty, where to us it is unacceptable,” he was quoted saying by Malay Mail online news on Monday (Oct 22).
Tun Mahathir was responding to a question posed to him at a public forum in Shah Alah, capital of Selangor state yesterday. The question was about the recent mysterious killing and disappearance of the well-known journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Mr Khashoggi, from Saudi Arabia, was a Washington Post contributor and an outspoken journalist. He was last Friday confirmed killed after having entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct 2.
Turkish intelligence sources and many media across the world accused Saudi Arabia government officials in the murder of Khashoggi as he once had close ties to the Saudi royal family and was very critical of Saudi government.
Tun Mahathir described the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi as “terrible cruelty”.
“There were people in the past who also didn’t like me.
“Thankfully, in our country we don’t have this sort of cruelty, and we don’t support such actions as killing someone who is a critic of the government,” he said.
