Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was decapitated on Oct. 2 inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in İstanbul after torture during which his fingers were cut off, according to media reports citing an audio recording of the brutal execution.
Turkey’s pro-government newspaper Yeni Şafak reported on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia Consul General Mohammad Utaybi’s voice could be heard in one of the recordings of Khashoggi’s “interrogation.” After Utaybi told the interrogators to “do it somewhere else outside or I will be in trouble,” he was told to “shut up if you want to live when you are back in Arabia.”
Utaybi returned to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday before Turkish police searched his residence in İstanbul.
Meanwhile, Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported that the dissection of Khashoggi’s body inside the consulate took seven minutes. It was conducted by Saudi forensics expert Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who was reportedly heard in the recordings while advising the interrogators to “listen to music” while he dissected the body.
According to Turkish police, al-Tubaigy was one of the 15 Saudis who had arrived in İstanbul on two planes and entered the consulate while Khashoggi was inside. The group, which left Turkey on the same day, also included Saudi intelligence officers and Royal Guards.
The New York Times confirmed the identities of nine people in the group on Tuesday, adding that at least four of them were previously part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage on foreign trips.
One of them, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, was a diplomat assigned to the Saudi Embassy in London in 2007, according to a British diplomatic roster. He traveled extensively with the crown prince, perhaps as a bodyguard.
A team of Turkish police spent more than nine hours in the consulate on Oct. 15 and Oct. 16 and the Associated Press reported that they found “certain evidence” about the killing of the prominent Saudi dissident.
Some materials at the Saudi consulate have been painted over, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday.
Turkish officials would not comment on the disposal method for the body, pending investigation and a planned search of the consul’s residence.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia promised to ensure a thorough probe and accountability over the missing journalist. President Donald Trump dispatched Pompeo on an urgent mission to Riyadh to defuse a crisis over Khashoggi.
After a full day of talks, a statement from Pompeo and a tweet by Trump said that the Saudi leadership “strongly denied knowledge of what took place” in the consulate, without outright rejecting that an incident occurred.
Officials in Turkey, where Pompeo heads on Wednesday, say that the Saudis killed Khashoggi inside the consulate. The Saudis earlier insisted, without evidence, that Khashoggi left freely while later reportedly hinted that rogue elements could be responsible.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met Pompeo at Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport on Wednesday. The meeting, who was also attended by Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın, and Turkey’s notorious National Intelligence Agency’s (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan, took 40 minutes.
Turkey is ranked 157th among 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). If Turkey falls two more places, it will make it to the list of countries on the blacklist, which have the poorest record in press freedom.
Turkey is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The most recent figures documented by SCF show that 237 journalists and media workers were in jail as of October 7, 2018, most in pretrial detention. Of those in prison 169 were under arrest pending trial while only 68 journalists have been convicted and are serving their time. Detention warrants are outstanding for 148 journalists who are living in exile or remain at large in Turkey.
Detaining tens of thousands of people over alleged links to the Gülen movement, the government also closed down some 200 media outlets, including Kurdish news agencies and newspapers, after a coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016.
The post Reports: Saudi journalist Khashoggi decapitated in Turkey after fingers cut off appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/reports-saudi-journalist-khashoggi-decapitated-in-turkey-after-fingers-cut-off/
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