THE US secretary of state has met with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the disappearance and alleged killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Pompeo landed in Riyadh yesterday morning and soon arrived at the royal palace, where King Salman greeted him. The US’ top diplomat thanked the king “for accepting my visit on behalf of President Trump” before going into a closed-door meeting.

Pompeo then met a smiling Prince Mohammed, the 33-year-old heir apparent to the throne of the world’s largest oil exporter.

Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia and took up a self-imposed exile in the US after the prince’s rise.

“We are strong and old allies,” the prince told Pompeo as journalists watched. “We face our challenges together, the past, the day of, tomorrow.”

Trump, who dispatched Pompeo to speak to the monarch over Khashoggi’s disappearance, said on Monday after talking with King Salman that the slaying could have been carried out by “rogue killers”.

Trump provided no evidence but that statement potentially offers the US-allied kingdom a possible path out of a global diplomatic firestorm.

“The king firmly denied any knowledge of it,” Trump said. “It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers.

“I mean, who knows? We’re going to try getting to the bottom of it very soon, but his was a flat denial.”

However, left unsaid was the fact that any decision in the ultraconservative kingdom rests solely with the ruling Al Saud family.

The meeting in Riyadh came just hours after a Turkish forensics team finished a search inside the Saudi Consulate, looking for evidence of the Washington Post columnist’s alleged killing and dismemberment.

The Saudi consul then left Istanbul for Saudi Arabia following an announcement that his official residence would be searched.

The Turkish foreign ministry said police will search Consul Mohammed al-Otaibi’s official residence and vehicles belonging to the consulate. 

Surveillance footage leaked in Turkish media shows vehicles moving between the consulate and the consul’s home after Khashoggi’s disappearance on October 2.

Turkish officials, who fear Saudi agents killed him in the consulate and disposed of his body, said evidence was found during the  initial search.

What evidence Turkish officials found was unknown, though President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said police sought traces of “toxic” materials and suggested parts of the consulate had been recently painted, without elaborating.

Saudi officials had unrestricted access to the consulate since Khashoggi’s disappearance without being stopped. Under the Vienna Convention, diplomatic posts are technically foreign soil that must be respected by host countries.

Saudi Arabia previously called allegations of murder “baseless”, but US media reports suggest the Saudis may acknowledge Khashoggi was killed there, perhaps as part of a botched interrogation.

“The effort behind the scenes is focused on avoiding a diplomatic crisis between the two countries and has succeeded in finding a pathway to deescalate tensions,” said Ayham Kamel, the head of the Eurasia Group’s Mideast and North African practice.

“Riyadh will have to provide some explanation of the journalist’s disappearance, but in a manner that distances the leadership from any claim that a decision was made at senior levels to assassinate the prominent journalist.”

CNN reported that the Saudis were going to admit the killing happened but deny the king or crown prince had ordered it. The New York Times alleged that the Saudi royal court would suggest that an official within the kingdom’s intelligence services, a friend of Prince Mohammed, had carried out the killing.

Forensics tests, like spraying luminol, can expose blood left behind, said Mechthild Prinz, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“It depends on how well they cleaned it up,” Prinz said. Told that a cleaning crew walked into the consulate before the forensic team arrived, she said: “You saw that? Wow. That’s going to be a problem.”

The UN human rights office is calling for the immediate and “absolute” lifting of diplomatic immunity enjoyed by any officials or premises in the investigation into the disappearance and suspected killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.

UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said the “inviolability or immunity” of people or premises “should be waived immediately”.

She said the “onus is on the Saudi authorities” to reveal what happened, and insisted “no further obstacles” should block investigators.