JAMAL’S DYING WORDS

Horror tale of the tape

Journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s last words were “I’m suffocating . . . Take this bag off my head. I’m claustrophobic,” according to the chief of investigations for a Turkish newspaper.

In an interview with Al Jazeera that was published Sunday, Nazif Karaman, of the Daily Sabah, described an audio recording that reportedly captured Khashoggi’s murder.

The tape was made inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where the Saudi-born journalist disappeared Oct. 2. The murder, according to Karaman, took about seven minutes.

Karaman told Al Jazeera the Saudis covered the floor with plastic bags before dismembering the journalist, a 15-minute process that was led by Salah al-Tubaigy, the head of the Saudi Scientific Council of Forensics.

The Saudis originally said Khashoggi, a critic of the government, left the consulate alive. The government later admitted he was strangled after a fistfight. By late October, Saudi Arabia’s attorney general said he believed the killing was “premeditated.”

The Washington Post columnist’s body has never been found. Khashoggi, who lived in the United States, went to the consul- ate to obtain paperwork so he could marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.

Cengiz reacted Thursday to reports about Khashoggi’s fate.

“I’m unable to express my sorrow to learn about dissolving your body Jamal!” she tweeted. “They killed you and chopped up your body, depriving me and your family of conducting your funeral prayer and burying you in Madinah as wished. Are these killers and those behind it human beings? Oh my God!”

Traces of acid were found at the Saudi consul general’s residence in Istanbul, leaving to speculation Khashoggi’s body was dissolved.

Karaman said the Daily Sabah would publish images of the tools the Saudis used and release some of the audio recordings.

President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed how to respond to the journalist’s murder as they broke bread Saturday night in Paris, a White House official told Reuters. Erdogan has said Saudi Arabia knows the killer is among a group of 15 people who arrived in Turkey on Oct. 1.

“We gave the tapes. We gave them to Saudi Arabia, to the United States, German, French and British, all of them,” Erdogan said. “They have listened to all the conversation in them. They know.”