Turkey calls for Saudi co-operation into Khashoggi probe
Turkey wants Saudi Arabia to reveal the location of Mr Khashoggi’s remains.
Turkey’s justice minister has renewed a call on Saudi Arabia to co-operate in the investigation into the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, saying “no one can escape responsibility”.
Abdulhamit Gul said that Saudi Arabia’s top prosecutor — who spent three days in Istanbul as part of joint Turkish-Saudi efforts to investigate the killing — had failed to answer Turkish investigators’ questions about the location of the writer’s remains as well as who ordered the killing.
“We expect these questions to be answered swiftly,” Mr Gul told reporters.
“No one can escape responsibility. This issue has become a world matter. It is not an issue that can be covered up.”
Istanbul’s chief prosecutor announced on Wednesday that The Washington Post columnist was strangled immediately after he entered the consulate on October 2 to collect a document he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee.
His body was dismembered and removed from the consulate, the prosecutor’s office stated, adding that the killing was premeditated.
The prosecutor’s statement that Mr Khashoggi was killed immediately conflicted with a report by pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak last month, which cited what it described as an audio recording of Mr Khashoggi being tortured before being killed.
Turkey is seeking the extradition of 18 suspects who have been detained in Saudi Arabia so that they can be put on trial in Turkey.
They include 15 members of an alleged “hit squad” that Turkey says was sent to Istanbul to kill the 59-year-old journalist, who lived in exile in the United States and had written critically of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Some of those implicated in the killing are close to the prince whose condemnation of the killing has failed to ease suspicions that he was involved.
Under mounting international pressure, Saudi Arabia has changed its narrative about Mr Khashoggi’s killing several times, and has recently acknowledging that Turkish evidence shows it was premeditated.
