A Saudi official yesterday denied he threatened UN investigator Agnes Callamard following her probe into journalist Jamal Khashoggi's 2018 murder, after the United Nations confirmed she was issued a death threat.

At a meeting with UN officials in Geneva in January 2020, a senior Saudi official threatened twice to have Callamard "taken care of" if she was not restrained by the United Nations, the Guardian newspaper reported this week.

Without naming the Saudi official, Callamard -- the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions -- told the British newspaper that the comment was perceived by her Geneva-based colleagues as a "death threat".

Awwad Alawwad, the head of Saudi Arabia's Human Rights Commission, yesterday said Callamard and UN officials believed he had made the threat.

"I reject this suggestion in the strongest terms," Alawwad wrote on Twitter.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva, confirmed that "the details in the Guardian story about the threat aimed at Agnes Callamard are accurate".

Khashoggi, a Saudi insider-turned-critic who wrote for The Washington Post, was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Callamard's report, published in June 2019, concluded that there was "credible evidence" that top Saudi officials, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were liable for the killing.