Saudis lay in wait for Khashoggi, sources say
ISTANBUL >> As Jamal Khashoggi prepared to enter the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, a squad of men from Saudi Arabia who investigators suspect played a role in his disappearance was ready and in place.
They had arrived from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, early that morning and checked in at two international hotels in Istanbul before driving to the consulate in the leafy Levent neighborhood, said two people with knowledge of the investigation. One of them, the Mövenpick Hotel Istanbul, is a few minutes from the consulate by car.
By the end of the day, a 15-member Saudi team had conducted its business and left the country, departing on planes bound for Cairo and Dubai, according to flight records and the people familiar with the probe.
Turkish officials have previously said they believe that Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and critic of the Saudi government, was killed inside the consulate.
Turkish officials, who are examining the squad’s movements, have now expanded their investigation to explore what happened at the residence of the Saudi consul general, Mohammed al-Otaibi, located 500 yards from the consulate. A photograph taken from a Turkish police closed-circuit television camera outside the residence and obtained by The Washington Post shows a Mercedes Vito van with tinted windows that security officials say transported some of those men from the consulate to the residence about two hours after Khashoggi entered the consulate.
In the week since the disappearance of Khashoggi, a contributor to The Post’s Global Opinions section, the Saudi government has maintained that he left the consulate soon after he arrived.
Not only do they not know what happened to him, they say, but they are also worried for his safety.
“It goes without saying that his family in the Kingdom remain gravely concerned about him, and so are we,” the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Khalid bin Salman, wrote in a message that was shared with the news media on Monday.