Trump, Erdogan ask same question: ‘Where’s the body?’
ISTANBUL — Twenty-four days after a team of Saudi agents killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, U.S. and Turkish officials are still asking the same question: Where’s the body?
The remains of the Washington Post columnist are critical to vetting the shifting accounts of the Saudi government and determining a suitable punishment for the oil-rich monarchy, a key partner in the Trump administration’s Middle East policy.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intensified pressure on the Saudi government on Friday in a speech demanding Khashoggi’s body.
“There has been a declaration that he has been killed, but where is the body?” Erdogan said. “You must show it.”
For days, President Donald Trump has also been asking his aides about the body, but Washington remains in the dark about its whereabouts, according to U.S. officials and diplomats familiar with the situation.
Saudi officials said earlier this week that Khashoggi’s body had been rolled into a carpet and given to a “local collaborator,” but Turkish authorities say it was dismembered in a grisly operation involving a bone saw and large suitcases.
“Finding the body in whatever form it’s in could give credence to Turkey’s account,” said Amanda Sloat, a Turkey scholar at the Brookings Institution. “If the body appears in the way the leaks suggest, it gives credence to the premeditated nature of this attack and reflects poorly on the Saudi regime.”
On Thursday, CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed Trump about her recent trip to Turkey, where she listened to purported audio of Khashoggi’s killing. But even after the meeting, U.S. officials made clear they needed additional information before taking further punitive action. “We continue to seek all relevant facts in this case,” said State Department spokesman Robert Palladino. “As we learn more we will take additional actions as the facts warrant.”
In his speech, Erdogan suggested that Turkey has additional “information and documents” about the killing that it would eventually reveal and repeated his call for Saudi Arabia to hand over the 18 people it has arrested in the case if the country’s authorities could not “make them talk.”
Later in the day, the semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported that Turkish prosecutors were set to “demand” the extradition of those suspects.
For Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey since 2003, the crime has provided grounds for pushing back against Saudi Arabia, one of its regional rivals, and weakening the credibility of the crown prince. Mohammed this week called the killing a “heinous crime.”
Meanwhile, Salah Khashoggi, the eldest son of Jamal Khashoggi, arrived in the U.S. Thursday after departing Saudi Arabia, one person close to the family said. Salah is a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen who had previously been restricted from leaving and who was photographed earlier this week meeting Salman and Mohammed and receiving their condolences. All four of Khashoggi’s children are now in the U.S.