Search for body parts of missing Saudi journalist
TURKISH INVESTIGATORS were trying to pinpoint where missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s remains may be as members of staff at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul were interrogated.
Investigators are pursuing the possibility the remains were taken to a forest outside Istanbul or to another city after his suspected killing at the consulate earlier this month.
Ankara’s top diplomat, meanwhile, denied sharing any audio from the Saudi Consulate with US officials.
The official said that police have established that two vehicles belonging to the consulate left the building on October 2, the day Mr Khashoggi had walked into the consulate and vanished.
One of the vehicles travelled to the nearby Belgrade Forest while the other went to the city of Yalova, across the Sea of Marmara from Istanbul, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the secrecy of the ongoing investigation.
It was not immediately clear if police had already searched the areas.
Turkish prosecutors meanwhile, questioned 15 Turkish employees of the consulate, including the consul’s driver, technicians, accountants and telephone operators.
Earlier, a group of people left the building, got into a van belonging to the Saudi mission and were driven away.
Turkish reports say Mr Khashoggi was brutally murdered and dismembered inside the consulate by members of an assassination squad with ties to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Saudis have dismissed those reports as baseless but have yet to explain what happened to Mr Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for who wrote critically of Prince Mohammed’s rise to power.
President Donald Trump, who first came out hard on the Saudis over the disappearance but had since backed off, said it “certainly looks” as though Mr Khashoggi is dead, and that the consequences for the Saudis “will have to be very severe” if they are found to have killed him.
Saudi Arabia has not responded to repeated requests for comment from news agencies over recent days over Mr Khashoggi’s disappearance.
The pro-government Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak on Wednesday reported that an audio recording of Mr Khashoggi’s slaying suggests a Saudi team accosted him after he entered the consulate, cutting off his fingers and later decapitating him.
Another newspaper has printed surveillance camera photographs showing members of a Saudi team allegedly brought in to dispose of Khashoggi, which include a member of Prince Mohammed’s entourage. The man has been photographed in the background of Prince Mohammed’s trips abroad.