We’re close to finding body

Turkey scours forest for remains of murdered Saudi journalist as new CCTV foot age emerges

TURKISH investigators believe they are ‘very close’ to finding the remains of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

As forensic teams continued to scour a forest outside Istanbul, officials suggested that the 59year- old’s mutilated body may have been buried with the help of ‘Turkish collaborators’ with links to the criminal underworld.

One Turkish official said: ‘We’ll find out what happened to the body before long.’ The development came as: The Saudi government finally admitted that Mr Khashoggi had died inside their consulate in Istanbul on October 2 – but claimed he had done so in a fist fight;

Donald Trump sparked anger by describing the Saudi version of events as ‘credible’;

Footage emerged of the journalist and his fiancee together just hours before his death;

The vans that left the consulate – and which may have contained Mr Khashoggi’s body – tried to avoid being tracked;

Turkish investigators said that parts of the consulate, as well as being painted, showed signs of being ‘chemically cleaned’.

A fortnight after Mr Khashoggi’s di s a ppearance a nd a pparent slaughter caused worldwide revulsion, the Saudis were finally forced to admit that he had died at their consulate in Istanbul.

But they denied his death had been ordered by the country’s ruling elite, instead claiming he had been killed in a fight.

Saudi Arabia’s deputy intelli- gence chief Ahmed al-Assiri and Saud al- Qahtani, a senior aide to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, have been sacked over the affair.

Yesterday, despite widespread cynicism over the account, President Trump described it as ‘credible’. Republican Senator Rand Paul was among those who rubbished the comment, saying: ‘ The socalled explanation from the Saudis is not even close to credible.’

The British Government did not comment yesterday, but Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has previously warned of ‘consequences’ if Mr Khashoggi was murdered.

As the worldwide political implications of the affair continued, grainy footage of the journalist with his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, 36, emerged on Turkish TV. It showed the couple arriving at their apartment in Istanbul’s Topkapi district at 5am on October 2 and leaving shortly afterwards.

They were captured on camera again at 2pm and as they left on the six-mile journey to the consulate in the Levent area of the city.

Mr Khashoggi had gone to the consulate to obtain a copy of his divorce certificate so he could marry Ms Cengiz. Instead, he was walking to his death as his fiancee waited outside.

According to reports thought to be based on information from the Turkish intelligence services, Mr Khashoggi was tortured and mutilated by a 15-strong hit squad, who then dismembered his corpse during a seven-minute bloodbath.

Turkish media reported yesterday that some of the rooms in the consulate appeared to have been ‘chemically cleaned’.

There were also reports that vans leaving the building sought to evade CCTV, but were traced to Belgrade Forest, 18 miles north of Istanbul.

Forensic teams were also searching an area in the remote town of Yalova, 58 miles east of Istanbul. One van – fitted with diplomatic plates – reportedly ‘disappeared’ from cameras for about seven minutes, leading investigators to suspect Mr Khashoggi’s remains may have been handed to a local criminal group for burial.

Last night, Numan Kurtulmus, a deputy head of justice of Turkey’s ruling AKP party, said full details of the death would be released.

AT LEAST the fate of Jamal Khashoggi is now beyond doubt, even if the terrible details are yet to emerge in full. Saudi Arabia has finally confirmed that the missing journalist was killed inside its Istanbul consulate and alleges, implausibly, that he died in a fist fight that somehow went wrong.

How unfortunate for Mr Khashoggi, a dissident writer and thorn in the side of the regime, that he should pick a quarrel with 15 trained thugs, including bodyguards to the ruling Saudi elite and a forensics expert armed with a bone saw.

In contrast, the gruesome account of his death leaked by the Turkish authorities seems overwhelmingly likely: that the 59-year-old, soon to be married, was lured into the consulate, where he was dismembered alive and decapitated by a ‘tiger team’ flown into the country especially for the purpose.

No doubt in the coming days we will receive further distressing news from the Turks – that, for example, the freshly painted walls in the consulate show traces of Mr Khashoggi’s blood.

A major search of the woodland near Istanbul might very well reveal his body parts. Why else would a Saudi consular vehicle head in that direction, wrenching out and discarding its satellite tracking equipment on the way?

Yet none of this can explain the reckless brutality of a murder which, as John Sawers, the former head of MI6, has said, was clearly ordered from the top by the Crown Prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman.

The diplomatic and reputational consequences have been hugely damaging for the Kingdom.

The first explanation is that Mr Khashoggi was seen as a particular threat. Not only was he an exceptionally well-informed insider, a member of the Riyadh establishment – he had been an adviser to the Saudi security services – but he was a vocal critic of the current regime through his regular column in the Washington Post.

Significantly, Mr Khashoggi was a patron of a new online platform called the Bee Army, an encrypted messaging system for dissidents both outside and inside the Kingdom, with a particular space for Saudis to post their grievances about corruption.

It was the Bee Army that probably proved fatal.

Saudi Arabians are the largest internet users in the Middle East, but the government there has nothing like the Chinese Great Firewall to filter out undesirable influences. It uses more draconian means.

More disturbing, still, however, is the growing evidence that the 33- year- old Crown Prince, who presents himself as a reformer, is fast becoming an irrational, unstable despot to rival the late Saddam Hussein.

Worried Kuwaitis already call him ‘little Saddam’, fearing that he, too, has plans to invade their vulnerable emirate.

As early as December 2015, the BND, t he German equivalent of MI6, took the highly unusual step of releasing a report about generational change in the Saudi leadership. It warned that power was

Remains may have been handed to a local gang