Saudi official denies threat to harm UN Khashoggi investigator

FILE PHOTO: Agnes Callamard, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, holds a joint news conference with Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in Brussels, Belgium December 3, 2019. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

DUBAI (Reuters) - A senior Saudi official denied on Thursday he had threatened to harm the human rights expert who led the U.N. investigation into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, after the United Nations backed the expert's account of the threat.

Agnes Callamard, the U.N. expert on summary killings, has said that a Saudi official threatened at a Jan. 2020 meeting in Geneva that she would be "taken care of" if she was not reined in following her investigation into the journalist's murder.