Hit squad’s ‘links with Saudi ruler’
A MISSING Saudi journalist was dismembered while still alive and dissolved in acid, it was claimed last night.
Leaked audio of Jamal Khashoggi’s horrific final moments suggest he was drugged, tortured, mutilated and killed after being lured to the Saudi consulate in Turkey.
The seven-minute recording of his execution is said to have been made on his own Apple smartwatch.
Police are hunting a 15-strong hit squad believed to have been sent to murder the 60-year-old who was a fierce critic of the Saudi regime who deny involvement.
Four of the suspects are linked to Saudi ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s security team and a fifth is a top forensic doctor.
A bodyguard for the Crown Prince, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, has been confirmed as a suspect in the Turkish police investigation.
The tape is said to reveal Mr Khashoggi was dragged from the Saudi Consul General’s office to a table in a next-door study where he was surgically chopped to pieces.
It allegedly captured the journalist’s dying screams before he was injected with a drug and fell silent.
“There was no attempt to interrogate him. They had come to kill him,” a source said.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed the case with Turkey’s president Recep Edogan during a visit to Ankara yesterday.