Plot thickens in Khashoggi case
ISTANBUL (AP) — A pro-government Turkish newspaper has published surveillance video images showing a man who previously traveled with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage to the US walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul before writer Jamal Khashoggi vanished there.
The Sabah newspaper’s report yesterday shows the man also later outside the Saudi consul general’s home, checking out of a Turkish hotel and leaving Turkey on Oct. 2. Images shot by the Houston Chronicle later distributed by
The Associated Press show the same man was in Prince Mohammed’s entourage when he visited a Houston subdivision in April to see rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Harvey.
The AP couldn’t immediately verify the man’s identity. Meanwhile, the Washington
Post has published a new column by Khashoggi in which he warns that governments in the Middle East “have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.”
Post Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah says she received the column from Khashoggi’s assistant a day after he was reported missing.
Khashoggi writes that actions like imprisoning journalists and seizing control of newspapers “no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community.” He says, “Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation followed by silence.”
Turkish officials have claimed Saudi agents killed and dismembered him.
According to an account in the pro-government daily newspaper Yeni Safak, the audio recording proves that Khashoggi was seized as soon as he entered the office of the Saudi consul on Oct.2
Khashoggi was beaten and had his fingers cut off, according to the news account.
Saudi Consul General Mohammed al-Otaibi asked for the torture to be done outside his office, saying: “You will put me in trouble.”
“If you want to live when you come back to Arabia, shut up,” the consul was told by a Saudi hit team who had flown to Istanbul hours before Khashoggi’s planned visit to the consulate, where he had expected to pick up legal papers he needed to get married. Khashoggi was beheaded and his body was cut up. A Saudi forensics specialist Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy can be heard putting on headphones to listen to music and telling others to do the same while the body was dismembered, according to the reports.
Investigators believe that Khashoggi’s body was taken to the consul general’s house, where it was disposed of.