Istanbul, Oct 23: Just hours after writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, a man strolled out of the diplomatic post apparently wearing the columnist’s clothes as part of a macabre deception to sow confusion over his fate, according to surveillance video leaked on Monday.
The new video broadcast by CNN, as well as a pro-government Turkish newspaper’s report that a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage made four calls to the royal’s office from the consulate around the same time, put ever-increasing pressure on the kingdom. Meanwhile, Turkish crime-scene investigators swarmed a garage on Monday night in Istanbul where a Saudi consular vehicle had been parked.
All this came on the eve of Prince Mohammed’s high-profile investment summit in Riyadh, which has seen a raft of the world’s top business leaders decline to attend over the slaying of the writer for The Washington Post. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also has promised that details of Khashoggi’s killing “will be revealed in all its nakedness” in an address he’ll make before parliament around the same time on Tuesday.
“We are faced with a situation in which it was a brutally planned (killing) and efforts were made to cover it up,” said Omer Celik, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party. “God willing, the results will be brought into the open, those responsible will be punished and no one will dare think of carrying out such a thing again.”
Surveillance video on CNN showed the man in Khashoggi’s dress shirt, suit jacket and pants, although he wore a different pair of shoes. It cited a Turkish official as describing the man as a “body double” and a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer. The man walks out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then takes a taxi to Istanbul’s famed Blue Mosque, where he goes to a public bathroom, changes back out of the clothes and leaves. He later eats dinner with his accomplice and goes back to a hotel, where footage shows him smiling and laughing.
The state-run broadcaster TRT later also reported that a man who entered the consulate was seen leaving the building in Khashoggi’s clothes.
In the days after Khashoggi vanished, Saudi officials initially said he had left the consulate by its back door. Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Khalid bin Salman, a brother of the crown prince, wrote Oct. 8 that Khashoggi had left, and that claims the kingdom “have detained him or killed him are absolutely false, and baseless.”
The fact that the Saudi team would allegedly have a man walking around in Khashoggi’s clothes would suggest a premeditated plot to kill the writer.
A separate report on Monday by newspaper Yeni Safak said Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a member of Prince Mohammed’s entourage seen on trips to the U.S., France and Spain this year, made the calls from the consulate. The newspaper said the four calls went to Bader al-Asaker, the head of Prince Mohammed’s office. It said another call went to the United States. Yeni Safak cited no source for the information.
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