Fears for missing Saudi reporter
TURKISH investigators believe a prominent Saudi journalist who contributed to The Washington Post was killed in “a preplanned murder” at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, the Post reported on the weekend, citing two anonymous officials.
One Turkish official also told The Associated Press that detectives’ “initial assessment” was that Jamal Khashoggi was killed at the consulate, without elaborating.
Saudi authorities early yesterday called the allegation “baseless”.
Khashoggi, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the US for the past year, vanished on Tuesday while on a visit to the consulate. His disappearance has threatened to up-end already-fraught relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and it raises new questions about the kingdom and the actions of its assertive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, about whom Khashoggi wrote critically.
“If the reports of Jamal’s murder are true, it is a monstrous and unfathomable act,” the Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt said in a statement.
“Jamal was – or, as we hope, is – a committed, courageous journalist. He writes out of a sense of love for his country and deep faith in human dignity and freedom.”
The Post cited one anonymous official who said investigators believe a 15-member team “came from Saudi Arabia”.
The official added: “It was a preplanned murder.”
A Turkish official, requesting anonymity, told the AP something similar.
“The initial assessment of the Turkish police is that Mr Khashoggi has been killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul,” the official said.
“We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate.”
Khashoggi, 59, went missing while on a visit to the consulate in Istanbul for paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancee. The consulate insists the writer left its premises, contradicting Turkish officials.
“Jamal is not dead! I don’t believe he’s been killed!” his fiancee Hatice wrote on Twitter late Saturday night.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency early yesterday carried a statement from the Istanbul Consulate that “strongly denounced these baseless allegations”.