Khashoggi’s killing premeditated – Saudis
Saudi Arabia acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the killing of Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated, backtracking on its previous claim that he had died accidentally during a fistfight.
The reversal is the latest shift in the official Saudi narrative surrounding the killing, which it finally acknowledged on Sunday. For two weeks after his disappearance the Saudis had claimed that Khashoggi left the building alive.
Human Rights Watch confirmed yesterday that the murdered journalist’s son, Salah, and his family had finally left Saudi Arabia after months spent under a travel ban imposed because of his father’s criticism of the country’s leadership. He was shown on state television on Wednesday shaking hands with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader and the man suspected of ordering the killing. Salah is a dual Saudi-US citizen and was on a plane to Washington yesterday.
Saudi Arabia has arrested 18 officials who were present in the consulate in Istanbul when Khashoggi died, including several individuals with close links to the crown prince. Officials have suggested that they carried out a ‘‘rogue’’ operation.
The statement from the Saudi public prosecutor confirming the murder coincided with reports that the CIA director, Gina Haspel, who is visiting Turkey, had been able to listen to an audio recording that purports to record Khashoggi’s killing.
‘‘Information from the Turkish side affirms that the suspects in Khashoggi’s case premeditated their crime,’’ the prosecutor’s statement, announced on Saudi state television, said.
Turkish officials have suggested that a joint Saudi-Turkish investigation is merely a symbolic ‘‘working group’’ while a separate, Turkish-only criminal investigation takes place.
Saudi Arabia has faced mounting scepticism about its official version, which British Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament on Thursday was ‘‘not credible’’.
President Donald Trump called the shifting Saudi narrative ‘‘one of the worst in the history of coverups’’ and speculated that the crown prince, known as MBS, probably ordered the killing.
Khalid al-Falih, the Saudi energy minister who opened the country’s ‘‘Davos in the desert’’ investment conference this week in place of the crown prince, also admitted that Khashoggi’s killing was, in fact, premeditated. ‘‘It’s not a death, it’s a murder. We admit it, we’re dealing with it,’’ he told CNN on the closing day of the conference. The admission came as MBS chaired the inaugural meeting of a new committee to restructure the security and intelligence services. Four senior intelligence officials were sacked over the murder, including Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide to MBS who took charge of monitoring and controlling the media. Months before he was killed, Khashoggi told friends that he had been visited in the US by Qahtani, who passed on a message from the crown prince urging him to return to Saudi Arabia.
King Salman’s choice of his heir to oversee the committee was widely seen as an attempt to distance the crown prince from the killing. Still, an increasing number of threads in the investigation lead back to him, including multiple phone calls apparently placed to his office on the day of the murder.
They were said to have been made by Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a close member of his entourage and a member of the 15-man hit squad – all now in detention – who travelled to Istanbul to kill Khashoggi.
Yesterday a Turkish forensic science team began searching a covered well in the grounds of the Saudi consul-general’s residence in Istanbul, where it is feared Khashoggi’s remains were dumped after being dissolved in acid. Steps lead down to the well from the residence, where several Saudi diplomatic vehicles went soon after the killing.
The Saudi authorities had previously prevented the team from searching the well.
Saudi Arabia claimed at one point that Khashoggi’s body was rolled in a rug and handed to a ‘‘local co-operator’’ for disposal.
Turkish sources told the progovernment Yeni Safak newspaper of their suspicions that Khashoggi’s body was dissolved in acid before being thrown down the 30-metre deep well. Turkish investigators found a chemicals mask in a suitcase in the boot of a Saudi diplomatic car that had been abandoned. Police are continuing to search the Belgrad forest, on the northwestern outskirts of Istanbul, and farmland in Yalova, 80km south of the city.
– The Times