‘Tape appears to link plot to Saudi prince’
Shortly after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated last month, a member of the kill team instructed a superior over the phone to “tell your boss”, believed to be Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, that the operatives had carried out their mission, according to three people familiar with a recording of Khashoggi’s killing collected by Turkish intelligence.
The recording, shared last month with CIA Director Gina Haspel, is seen by intelligence officials as some of the strongest evidence linking Crown Prince Mohammed to the killing of Khashoggi, a Virginia resident and Washington Post columnist whose death prompted an international outcry.
While he was not mentioned by name, US intelligence officials believe “your boss” was a reference to the prince. Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, one of 15 Saudis dispatched to Istanbul to confront Khashoggi at the Saudi Consolate there, made the phone call and spoke in Arabic, the people said.
Turkish intelligence officers have told US officials they believe that Mutreb, a security officer who frequently traveled with Crown Prince Mohammed, was speaking to one of the crown prince’s aides. While translations of the Arabic may differ, the people briefed on the call said Mutreb also said to the aide words to the effect of “the deed was done.”
“A phone call like that is about as close to a smoking gun as you are going to get,” said Bruce O Riedel, a former CIA officer now at the Brookings Institution. “It is pretty incriminating evidence.”
Turkish officials have said that the audio does not conclusively implicate Crown Prince Mohammed, and US intelligence and other government officials have cautioned that however compelling the recording may be, it is still not irrefutable evidence of his involvement in the death of Khashoggi.
But US national security adviser John Bolton rejected the claims. He said he hadn’t heard the recording. Asked if the audio links the prince to the killing, he said: “That’s not the conclusion I think that the people who heard it have come to, and that’s certainly not the position of the Saudi government.” AGENCIES