Jamal Khashoggi’s final column
Khashoggi allegedly beheaded, dismembered, his fingers cut off
ISTANBUL: Saudi agents were waiting when Jamal Khashoggi walked into their country’s consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. Khashoggi was dead within minutes, beheaded, dismembered, his fingers severed, and within two hours the killers were gone, according to details from audio recordings described by a senior Turkish official.
The government of Turkey let out these and other leaks about the recordings, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Ankara, in an escalation of pressure on Saudi Arabia and the US for answers about Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi dissident journalist who lived in Virginia and wrote for The Washington Post.
The new leaks, which were splashed in lurid detail across a pro-government newspaper, came a day after Pompeo and the Trump administration had appeared to accept at face value the promises of the Saudi rulers to conduct their own investigation into Khashoggi’s disappearance – regardless of Turkish assertions that senior figures in the royal court had ordered his killing.
As the Saudis and the Americans tried to put the crisis behind them, the brutality described in the leaks served as a reminder of why Khashoggi’s disappearance has triggered an international backlash more severe than countless mass killings or rights violations.
Trump, for his part, pushed back by questioning the Turkish claims, telling reporters that the US had asked for copies of any audio or video evidence of Khashoggi’s killing that Turkish authorities may possess – “if it exists”.
“I’m not sure yet that it exists, probably does, possibly does,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, adding: “I’ll have a full report on that” when Pompeo returned. “That’s going to be the first question I ask.”
US intelligence officials say they have growing circumstantial evidence that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the disappearance of Khashoggi, who entered the consulate in Istanbul more than two weeks ago to obtain a document for his coming wedding and did not emerge.
Top Saudi officials have repeatedly denied any involvement in the disappearance – denials that they repeated to Pompeo when he visited Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a friend of Khashoggi’s, has yet to publicly accuse the Saudis of abducting or killing him, or to make public any supporting evidence.
But Turkish officials on Wednesday reiterated their conclusion that 15 Saudi agents, some with ties to Crown Prince Mohammed, were waiting for Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate the moment he arrived, at about 1.15pm on October 2.
After he was shown into the office of the consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, the agents seized Khashoggi almost immediately and began to beat and torture him, eventually cutting off his fingers, the senior Turkish official said, describing the audio recordings.
Whether Khashoggi was killed before his fingers were removed and body dismembered is undetermined.
But the consul was present and objected, the official said. “Do this outside. You will put me in trouble,” al-Otaibi told the agents, according to the Turkish official and a report in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak.
Both cited audio recordings said to have been obtained by Turkish intelligence.
“If you want to live when you come back to Arabia, shut up,” one of the agents replied, according to both the official and the newspaper.
A top Saudi doctor of forensics had been brought along for the dissection and disposal of the body – an addition to the team that Turkish officials have called evidence of premeditation. And as the agents cut off Khashoggi’s head and dismembered his body, the doctor had some advice, according to the senior Turkish official.
Listen to music, he told them, as he donned headphones himself. That was what he did to ease the tension when doing such work, the doctor explained, according to the official describing the contents of the audio recordings.
Although several Turkish officials have described the audio recordings or other evidence related to Khashoggi’s disappearance in the consulate, all have declined to disclose how the material was obtained. Some recordings or other evidence may have come from intercepted communications or audio surveillance that the Turkish government is unwilling to acknowledge for fear of compromising intelligence sources or revealing violations of international law.
But Trump’s comments suggested that the Turks have also declined to share their evidence with US intelligence agencies, which are usually close partners. That reluctance suggests the Turkish government may be seeking to reach some accommodation with Saudi Arabia while avoiding a full rupture in relations with another important regional power.
Pompeo said repeatedly that the Trump administration was withholding judgment until seeing the results of the Turkish and Saudi investigations. | New York Times