‘Khashoggi Dragged, Murdered and Dismembered’

Trump Says Ties With Saudi Arabia ‘Excellent’:

LONDON -- Jamal Khashoggi was dragged from the consul general's office inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last Tuesday before he was brutally murdered by two men who cut up his body, sources close to the investigation have told Middle East Eye.
Turkish officials say they know when and where in the building the veteran Saudi journalist was killed and are considering whether to dig up the consul-general's garden to see whether his remains are buried there.

Khashoggi, 59, has been missing since last Tuesday when he entered the consulate to obtain paperwork so he could remarry, and has not been seen since.

Saudi officials have strongly denied any involvement in his disappearance and say that he left the consulate soon after arriving. However they have not presented any evidence to corroborate their claim and say that video cameras at the consulate were not recording at the time.

A Turkish source with direct knowledge of the investigation has given MEE a detailed account of what investigators say happened in the consulate last Tuesday.

"We know when Jamal was killed, in which room he was killed and where the body was taken to be dismembered. If the forensic team are allowed in, they know exactly where to go," he said.

Khashoggi first went to the consulate on September 28 and met with a Saudi diplomat in an attempt to get the papers he needed.

The Saudi diplomat passed him on to a member of Saudi intelligence who said the consulate would be unable to provide what he needed that day, but he could return the following week, the source said.

Khashoggi left the building on Friday with the telephone number of the intelligence official. 

On Tuesday morning, Khashoggi called and asked if he should still come to the consulate and was told that the papers were ready for him, the source said. His appointment was for 1pm.

Half an hour before then, during the lunch break held at the consulate, all local staff members left for their usual lunch break which lasts an hour. As they left, they were told to take the afternoon off because a high-level diplomatic meeting was planned for the afternoon in the consulate, the source said. 

As a time-stamped photo first published by the Washington Post has shown, Khashoggi walked into the consulate less than an hour later at 1.14 pm.

He was greeted by an official, and led into the consul-general's room. Shortly afterwards, two men entered the room and dragged Khashoggi out of the office and into another room where they killed him, the source said, without elaborating how he was killed.
Khashoggi's body was then dragged into a third room and dismembered, he said. 

A Saudi source told Reuters that British intelligence believed there had been an attempt to drug Khashoggi inside the consulate that culminated in an overdose. 

He said the information came from a British intelligence source.  

There are around 22 cars which are registered to the consulate of which between three and four are of interest to the murder inquiry.

One of them left the consulate building at 3:15pm and went several hundred meters to the nearby consul general's home, the source said.

MEE understands that the prosecutor general is now considering whether to dig up the consul general's garden to see whether Khashoggi's remains are buried there.
A separate Turkish source told MEE that the consul general has not left his house for the past three days and has cancelled all of his appointments.

This source also said that the Turkish police want to search the residence and also take all the cars which are registered to the consulate to a secure location to examine them, but the Saudis have not allowed this.

A source also told MEE the Saudis took all the hard drives from the security camera room at the consulate with them when they left the building.

The Saudis on Tuesday rescinded an offer they made originally to allow Turkish forensic experts onto the premises. Their offer was withdrawn after Turkish media outlets published a list of 15 Saudis who arrived in Istanbul on the same day Khashoggi disappeared.

The source who outlined the account of how Khashoggi was killed said that police investigators were confident they already had enough forensic evidence from searches of the sewage network connected to the building.

A second Turkish source with knowledge of the investigation told MEE that the Turks had video and audio evidence of the killing. However, they have not revealed how they obtained this evidence. 

But particular attention is being paid to the Apple watch that Khashoggi was wearing when he entered the building. This is synced electronically to the iPhone that he gave his fiancee before entering the building.

Later on Friday, Saudi Arabia confirmed that it had formed a joint team with Turkey to "uncover the circumstances of the disappearance" of the veteran journalist, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said Thursday.

Global business leaders are reassessing their ties with Saudi Arabia, stoking pressure on the Persian Gulf kingdom to explain what happened to the dissident writer.

British billionaire Richard Branson Friday suspended business links with Saudi Arabia, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he might not attend a major investment conference in the country this month.

The investment conference lists dozens of expected speakers, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Blackrock Chairman Larry Fink and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, the latter confirming Friday that he will go.

"I am planning on going at this point," he told broadcaster CNBC. "If more information comes out and changes, we could look at that."

Joe Kaeser, the president and CEO of German industrial giant Siemens AG, also still plans to attend for now.

The Financial Times, which is listed as a media partner to the event, announced it would no longer be doing so.

CNN canceled its partnership, and said its anchors and reporters would no longer moderate panels. The New York Times and its business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin similarly pulled out of the event. CNBC also said Friday it would not participate.

However, major U.S. defense contractors expressed concern to the Trump administration that lawmakers angered by the disappearance of the Saudi journalist will block further arms deals with Saudi Arabia, a senior U.S. official told Reuters Friday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he is not willing to throw away billions of dollars in military deals with Saudi Arabia over the suspected murder.

"What good does that do us?” Trump asked, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday.

"This took place in Turkey and to the best of our knowledge, Khashoggi is not a United States citizen,” Trump added, brushing aside the fact that the journalist lived in the U.S. 

In a separate interview, Trump told Fox News that while he didn’t "like” the incident and had assigned investigators to get to the bottom of the issue, relations with Saudi Arabia remained "excellent”.