Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month, met with the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Prince Khalid bin Salman, at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C. in late 2017 or early 2018, according to a new report.

Sources with knowledge of the meeting, which was confirmed by the Saudi Embassy, said that the Saudi government tried to convince Khashoggi to come back to Saudi Arabia for at least a year. According to NBC News, Prince Khalid, who is the brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and senior Royal Court adviser Saud bin Abdullah Al Qahtani had reached out to Khashoggi attempting to persuade him to return.

Al Qahtani, who was fired from his post on Friday, presented Khashoggi with the opportunity to work in a high-level job in the Royal Court or in a Saudi think tank over the summer, two sources said.

But Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of the Saudi government, rejected the overtures because he was worried he would be sent to prison or worse, NBC News reports. The Saudi government confirmed that it sought to coax Khashoggi to return to the kingdom.

It’s uncertain exactly what Khashoggi and Prince Khalid talked about during their half hour meeting in Washington. A friend of Khashoggi said the Washington Post columnist described the meeting as a “nice chat” and described Khalid as “quite nice.”

Khashoggi was last seen on Oct. 2 entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to receive paperwork for his upcoming wedding to his Turkish fiance. Although Saudi Arabia initially claimed that Khashoggi had left the consulate alive, the Saudi government changed its story, and said Friday that he was killed following an interrogation that “developed in a negative way, leading to a fistfight.”

[More: After Jamal Khashoggi disappeared, a Saudi agent left the consulate wearing his clothes]

Turkey claims that the murder was intentional and says they have audio recordings that confirm he was killed shortly after arriving at the consulate. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced over the weekend that he will "go into detail" about what his government knows on Tuesday.

Khalid is currently in Riyadh, and it’s uncertain whether he will remain Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S. Meanwhile, the State Department seeks answers from him upon his return to Washington.