Hit squad leader ‘called office of crown prince’
The alleged leader of a 15-man killing squad made four telephone calls from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to the crown prince’s office in the hours after Jamal Khashoggi was killed.
Turkish sources claimed yesterday that Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, head of the alleged hit team, made the calls to the mobile phone of Bader al-Asaker, who manages the office in Riyadh of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The claim undermines the Saudi position that the killing of the exiled critic of the Saudi regime was carried out by ‘‘rogue operatives’’ without the knowledge of the kingdom’s rulers.
Khashoggi is believed to have been tortured and murdered in the Saudi consulate three weeks ago when he attended a meeting to collect official papers before his marriage. Once part of the Saudi ruling family’s close circle, he had become a vocal critic of the crown prince, writing opinion articles on the subject in The Washington Post.
The revelations came amid a day of startling leaks from the Turkish government before a speech by President Erdogan today. He is preparing to dismantle Saudi Arabia’s explanation of the killing of Khashoggi as the two countries struggle to assert their own narrative of what happened inside the consulate on October 2.
Erdogan has promised to reveal the ‘‘naked truth’’ about how the journalist died when he addresses his AK Party’s parliamentary group. It will be the first time that the Turkish leader has made a full comment on Khashoggi’s disappearance, although his aides have been dripfeeding information to selected media outlets for three weeks.
Aerial footage released yesterday appears to show employees at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul burning documents in the yard of the building the day after Khashoggi disappeared. The video, from an unidentified source, was broadcast on AHaber, a channel owned by the brother of Erdogan’s sonin-law.
In a leak to the Sabah newspaper, which is part of the same group, police claimed that they had found traces of Khashoggi’s DNA in the back of a minivan belonging to the Saudi consulate.
Yesterday Turkish police were prevented from searching a parked Saudi diplomatic car in Istanbul when the Saudi consulate refused to give its permission.
It has emerged that a member of the alleged hit squad went to the Saudi consulate on the morning of Khashoggi’s death dressed in one set of clothes and emerged in another. He walked out through a door at the back of the building wearing what appeared to be the dead man’s clothes, in an apparent attempt to make it seem that the journalist had left alive.
Footage of Mustafa al-Madani was handed to CNN by Turkish investigators yesterday. It shows him entering the consulate at 11.03am by the front door; the same entrance that Khashoggi would walk through a little more than two hours later wearing a heavy shirt and dark trousers.
One hour and 38 minutes after Khashoggi’s arrival, Madani is seen walking out of the back door wearing a black suit jacket, grey shirt over a dark T-shirt and grey trousers – all identical to the outfit that the journalist was wearing that day. He also seems to be wearing a fake beard.
The only detail that is different from Khashoggi’s clothing is the shoes: Madani appears to be wearing the same trainers with a white stripe around the sole that he wore when he walked into the consulate. Khashoggi had been wearing dark brogues. – The Times