#BoycottUber was trending Monday after the new CEO of Uber called the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by men with ties to the Saudi government an unfortunate “mistake” and compared the assassination to the ride-sharing company’s problems with self-driving cars.
Dara Khosrowshahi sought to whitewash the premeditated dismemberment killing of Khashoggi and made it clear he wanted to avoid criticizing Saudi officials, who hold a large stake in the company and hold a seat on its board of directors.
“I think that government said that they made a mistake,” Khosrowshahi said in an interview with Axios.
“It’s a serious mistake. We’ve made mistakes too, right, with self-driving (cars),” he said. “So I think that people make mistakes. It doesn’t mean that they can never be forgiven.”
The Uber boss stuck to his guns even when an interviewer pointed out that any negative consequences from Uber’s test of self-driving cars were not deliberate like the Khashoggi killing.
U.S. intelligence has said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist who was chopped up while alive by a team of trained Saudi assassins inside the Saudi embassy in Turkey.
Karen Attiah, who was Khashoggi’s editor at the Post, said she was deleting the Uber app from her phone. She denounced Khosrowshahi for comparing “the murder of a human being to Uber making a tech glitch.”
Within an hour of the interview last week, Khosrowshahi called Axios to apologize for the remarks and claimed he believes “when it comes to Jamal Khashoggi, his murder was reprehensible and should not be forgotten or excused.”
Despite the walk back, the CEO has refused to seek the ouster of a board member who is a member of the Saudi ruling family.
Khosrowshahi, an immigrant from Iran who previously ran Expedia, took over as head of Uber in 2017 from founder Travis Kalanick.
