Uber C.E.O. Backtracks After Comparing Khashoggi's Killing to an Accident

Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who wrote for The Washington Post and was a resident of Virginia, was brutally murdered in October 2018 after he entered a Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The C.I.A. has concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the journalist's killing. As Axios journalists noted in their interview with Mr. Khosrowshahi, Saudi Arabia is Uber's fifth-largest shareholder, and Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and the recently named chairman of the state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco, sits on Uber's board. In the interview, Mr. Khosrowshahi compared the death of Mr. Khashoggi to the death of a woman who was struck by one of Uber's autonomous vehicles last year. Karen Attiah, an opinions editor for The Washington Post who worked with Mr. Khashoggi, said in a series of tweets on Monday that Mr. Khosrowshahi was "running cover for the Saudi government" and comparing the murder to a technology glitch.