Turkish officials have claimed that Saudi Arabia orchestrated the assassination in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, but have not found his remains.
ISTANBUL — Turkish investigators have extended their inquiry into the suspected assassination of a dissident journalist by Saudi Arabian officials to three areas in or near Istanbul, a Turkish official said on Friday, while police officers and prosecutors questioned Turkish employees of the Saudi Consulate in the city.
Looking for evidence of the fate of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was last seen entering the consulate, investigators were searching the Belgrad forest, a wooded area just north of Istanbul; Pendik, a district on the Asian side of the city; and a rural residence in Yalova, a town 60 miles south of the city, the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The New York Times. Turkish officials have alleged that Mr. Kashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered inside the consulate, accusations the Saudi government has denied.
Fifteen Turkish employees of the consulate, including the consul’s driver, testified in a court in downtown Istanbul on Friday, the state-run news agency Anadolu reported. Earlier this week, investigators searched the consulate and the consul’s nearby residence, though officials noted that there had been plenty of time to eliminate evidence, and that the consul had left the country, returning to Saudi Arabia.
Using surveillance television recordings and GPS signals, the authorities have tracked the movement of consular vehicles on Oct. 2, the day Mr. Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist living in the United States, disappeared, looking for his remains or other evidence of what happened to him. The police retrieved video recordings from the Belgrad forest area, and Turkish investigators were looking into the possibility that one of the Saudi officials whom the Turks have accused of killing Mr. Khashoggi and of disposing of his body owned a property in Yalova, the news agency Ihlas said.
Turkish officials have told news organizations that a team of 15 Saudis flew to Istanbul on the orders of the Saudi leadership, killed Mr. Khashoggi and disposed of his remains, leaving the country hours after arriving. The Saudi government has denied harming Mr. Khashoggi, insisting that he left the consulate safely, though they have offered no evidence of that.
Three people with knowledge of the plan have said that the Saudi royal court may blame an underling, Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri of the intelligence service, for what the Saudis will describe as a rogue or botched operation that resulted in Mr. Khashoggi’s death.
But in rare public comments, John Sawers, the influential former chief of the British intelligence agency MI6, called that narrative “blatant fiction” that “simply doesn’t hold water.” In an interview with the BBC on Friday, Mr. Sawers, a former diplomat with extensive experience in Arab nations, said that “it looks very likely to be the case” that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had ordered the killing.
Mr. Sawers’s stature and his public assessment make it harder for Western officials to accept an alternative explanation, in the interest of preserving relations with Prince Mohammed and his father, King Salman.
If it is proved that the crown prince ordered the killing, “it is a step too far — one that the U. K., the E. U. and the U. S. are going to have to respond to,” Mr. Sawers said, arguing that the Trump administration’s close embrace of Prince Mohammed had emboldened the crown prince. “I think President Trump and his ministerial team are waking up to just how dangerous it is to have people acting with a sense that they have impunity in their relationship with the United States.”
Throughout the week, Turkish officials have orchestrated a series of leaks about the progress of the investigation, including security camera images of the 15 Saudis at the airport, the consulate and the hotel. Officials say they have audio recordings of the torture, assassination and dismemberment of Mr. Khashoggi.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu denied on Friday that Turkey had shared any such recording with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during his visit to Ankara on Wednesday.
“It is out of the question that Turkey gave Pompeo or any other U. S. official any recording,” Mr. Cavusoglu told Anadolu during a visit to Albania. When the investigation is finished, “We will share the conclusions with the whole world,” he said. “It is out of the question that we have shared this and that information with any country.”
Several of the Saudis named by Turks and shown in the leaked images have ties to Prince Mohammed, and Western intelligence officials say it is hard to imagine such an operation being carried out without his approval. One of the suspects, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a close aide to Prince Mohammed, knew Mr. Khashoggi and worked with him years ago, when they were both stationed by the Saudi government at the embassy in London, a mutual former colleague has said.
The disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi, and grisly allegations about an assassination sanctioned at the highest levels of the Saudi hierarchy, have caused a diplomatic uproar, with Turkey appealing to its Western allies to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to say what happened.
Top officials of the American, British, French and Dutch governments, along with prominent corporate executives, withdrew from a Saudi investment conference next week in Riyadh, capital of the kingdom. Russian officials said on Friday that they would go ahead with plans to send more than 30 business leaders to the forum, after President Vladimir V. Putin expressed sympathy with the Saudis.
“Those who believe that there was a murder must present evidence,” Mr. Putin said on Thursday, at a foreign policy conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in Russia. He likened the allegations to the charge by Britain and its allies that Russian agents had used a nerve agent in a botched attempt to assassinate a Russian former spy in England, saying, “steps are taken against Russia, even sanctions, due to contrived reasons, without any proof.”
Mr. Kashoggi, whose 60th birthday was days after his disappearance, went to the consulate to obtain documentation of his divorce, so that he could marry his Turkish fiancée the next day.
