News / Saudi Arabia

Ankara gave out 'recordings' on Khashoggi murder to Riyadh, Washington

Saturday, 10 November 2018 2:31 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 10 November 2018 7:15 PM ]

The file photo shows members of the Sri Lankan web journalist association holding placards with the image of Jamal Khashoggi during a demonstration outside the Saudi embassy in Colombo on October 25, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey has given "recordings" on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia, the United States, Germany, France, and Britain.

In a televised speech on Saturday, Erdogan said Saudi Arabia knew the killer of Khashoggi was among a group of 15 people who arrived in Turkey one day ahead of the October 2 murder.

"We gave the recordings, we gave them to Saudi Arabia, we gave them to Washington, to the Germans, to the French, to the English," the Turkish president said.

"They listened to the conversations which took place here, they know."

Erdogan said there were no written documents.

The contents of the gruesome recording allegedly prove that Khashoggi was grabbed, drugged and dismembered with a bone saw. The voice attributed to a Saudi forensic evidence chief also suggests that others witnessing Khashoggi’s harrowing fate listened to music in order to drown out the sounds.

In a November 2 op-ed for the Washington Post, the Turkish president said there were still many "questions" for Saudi Arabia to answer regarding the killing of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Turkish judicial sources have said that Khashoggi was "strangled" as soon as he entered the diplomatic mission and his body was then "cut into pieces" under a "premeditated plan."

The body of Khashoggi remains missing and a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation into Khashoggi’s fate has made little progress so far.

Khashoggi, a prominent commentator on Saudi affairs who wrote for the Washington Post’s Global Opinions section, had lived in self-imposed exile in the US since September 2017, when he left Saudi Arabia over fears of the Riyadh regime’s crackdown on critical voices.

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The pro-government newspaper Sabah reported that the suitcases were then taken to the Saudi consul’s residence.

He was seeking to secure documentation for his forthcoming marriage when he entered the Saudi consulate, but never came out despite Riyadh’s initial claim that he exited the mission less than an hour after completing his paperwork.

The kingdom, however, later admitted that Khashoggi had been murdered in the consulate during an interrogation by rogue operatives that had gone wrong after diplomatic pressure grew tremendously on Riyadh to give an account on the mysterious fate of its national. However, Saudi Arabia said that it did not know the whereabouts of the body.