Man in fake beard used to mask Saudi ‘execution’
Crown Prince ‘expressed condolences’ footage later showed the imposter and another agent getting a taxi to Istanbul’s crowded Sultanahmet Square. The pair went into a toilet before emerging minutes later with Madani wearing his own clothes.
Mr Khashoggi, 59, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
Turkish officials believe he was tortured, killed and dismembered after attending an appointment to get papers for his upcoming wedding.
A prominent journalist, he had written critical articles about the Saudi regime and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman while living in self-imposed exile in the US.
Despite initially insisting he was alive, Saudi officials now claim he died following a fight in the consulate.
They said 18 Saudi nationals had been arrested over the killing, which Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir described as a “rogue operation” by individuals acting “outside the scope of their authority”. Saudi’s King Salman and the Crown Prince reportedly “expressed condolences” to the journalist’s son by phone yesterday.
Yasin Aktay, an adviser to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dismissed the Saudi version of events, saying: “One cannot help but wonder how there could have been a ‘fist fight’ between 15 young expert fighters and a 60-year-old Khashoggi, alone and defenceless.
“The more one thinks about it, the more it feels like our being mocked.”
Mr Erdogan said he would reveal the “naked truth” today. intelligence is