Turkey said on Tuesday it will search the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Instanbul for Jamal Khashoggi as a newspaper published an image of the journalist…
Turkey said on Tuesday it will search the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Instanbul for Jamal Khashoggi as a newspaper published an image of the journalist walking into the facility just hours before he vanished.
Khashoggi is seen in a surveillance photo published by the Washington Post entering the consulate where Turkish officials believe he was killed earlier this month.
A spokesman for Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said Saudi officials have relayed to Ankara that they were “open to cooperation” and would allow the consulate to be searched.
But the ministry did not provide a timeline when that might happen.
The surveillance image, which the newspaper said it received from a “person close to the investigation,” includes an Oct. 2 time stamp of Khashoggi, 59, walking to the consulate’s main entrance.
Saudi officials have called claims that Khashoggi was killed in the consulate “baseless” but have yet to release any evidence that the writer left the building, despite repeated requests from Turkish officials.
Turkey has not issued any proof to back up its claims.
Khashoggi, a contributor to the Washington Post who has been living in the United States since last year after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman instituted a crackdown on those critical of his policies, went to the consulate to get paperwork so he could marry his fiancee.
Hatice Cengiz told the Washington Post that she left him at the entrance around 1 p.m. that day and hasn’t seen him since.
She said she waited outside for him to come out and then realized something was wrong around 4 p.m. because the consulate closed at 3:30 p.m.
Cengiz, 36, said she called the consulate to say she was waiting at the entrance and asked: “Where is Jamal?”
A man then came to the entrance and told her, “There’s no one inside.”
Turkey believes Khashoggi was killed after entering the building and claim the day he vanished 15 Saudi nationals arrived at an airport in Istanbul in planes belonging to a Riyadh-based company and visited the consulate before returning home.
With Post wires
