Consulate staff quizzed in missing journalist probe
TURKISH investigators were trying to pinpoint where missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s remains may be as members of staff at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul were interrogated.
Investigators are pursuing the possibility the remains were taken to a forest outside Istanbul or to another city after his suspected killing at the consulate earlier this month.
Ankara’s top diplomat said police have established that two vehicles belonging to the consulate left the building on October 2, the day Mr Khashoggi walked into the consulate and vanished.
One vehicle travelled to the nearby Belgrade Forest and the other went to the city of Yalova, across the Sea of Marmara from Istanbul, the official said. It was not clear if police had already searched the areas.
Turkish prosecutors, meanwhile, questioned 15 Turkish employees of the consulate, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. They include the consul’s driver, technicians, accountants and telephone operators, according to the report.
Earlier, a group of people left the building, got into a van belonging to the Saudi mission and were driven away.
Turkish reports say Mr Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the consulate by an assassination squad with ties to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Saudis have dismissed those reports as baseless but have yet to explain what happened to Mr Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for the Washington Post who criticised Prince Mohammed.
President Donald Trump said the consequences for the Saudis “will have to be very severe” if they are found to have killed Mr Khashoggi.
The pro-government Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak on Wednesday reported that an audio recording of Mr Khashoggi’s slaying suggests a Saudi team accosted him after he entered the consulate, cutting off his fingers and later decapitating him.
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who visited Saudi Arabia and Turkey this week, told reporters on a plane to Mexico that he has neither seen nor heard such a recording.
Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also denied sharing any audio recordings with US officials.
Yesterday Turkey’s pro-government Sabah newspaper printed more surveillance camera photographs showing members of a Saudi team that was allegedly brought in to Turkey to dispose of Khashoggi.
A leaked surveillance photo published by the same paper on Thursday showed that a member of Prince Mohammed’s entourage during several trips abroad had walked into the Saudi consulate, just before the writer disappeared there.
The man, identified by Turkish officials as Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, has been photographed in the background of Prince Mohammed’s trips to the United States, France and Spain this year.
This week, Turkish crime scene investigators searched the Saudi consul general’s residence in Istanbul and carried out a second search of the consulate itself. Authorities have not said what they found, although technicians carried out bags and boxes from the consul general’s home. He left Turkey on Tuesday.