Proof writer slain: Turkey
Govt says it has recordings of Istanbul killing
Turkey’s Government has told US officials it has audio and video proof that missing Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The newspaper, for which Khashoggi is a columnist, cited anonymous officials as saying the recordings show a Saudi security team detained the writer when he went to the consulate on October 2 to pick up a document for his upcoming wedding.
The Associated Press was not immediately able to confirm the report and Turkish officials would not comment.
Meanwhile, a delegation from Saudi Arabia has arrived in Turkey as part of an investigation into the writer’s disappearance, according to a Foreign Ministry official.
Saudi Arabia has called the allegation it abducted or harmed Khashoggi “baseless.” However, it has offered no evidence to support its claim he left the consulate and vanished, despite his fiancee waiting outside.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said the delegation would hold talks with Turkish officials over the weekend.
On Thursday, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Turkey and Saudi Arabia would form a “joint working group” to look into Khashoggi’s disappearance.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Saudi Arabia welcomed Turkey’s approval of the joint working group.
The Saudi statement said the kingdom is keen “to sustain the security and safety of its citizenry, wherever
they might happen to be.”
Amid growing concern over Khashoggi’s fate, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country wanted to know “the whole truth” about the writer’s disappearance, calling the early details about the case “very worrying.”
Macron said “I’m waiting for the truth and complete clarity to be made” since the matter is “very serious.” He spoke Friday in Yerevan, Armenia, to French broadcasters RFI and France 24.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Berlin was also “very concerned” about the writer’s disappearance and
called on Saudi Arabia to “participate fully” in clearing up reports that he may have been killed.
The fiancee of the missing Saudi journalist on Friday urged US President Donald Trump to use his clout to find out what happened to her partner.
Trump on Friday said US relations with Saudi Arabia were “excellent” and he didn’t want to scuttle highly lucrative arms deals with Riyadh.
But he declared yesterday the US would uncover the truth about what happened to Khashoggi, promising to personally call Saudi Arabia’s King Salman soon about “the terrible situation in Turkey”.
“We’re going to find out what happened,” Trump pledged when questioned by reporters in Cincinnati where he was headlining a political rally.