At 1.14pm on October 2, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul and off the face of this Earth. He vanished as if he had never existed. But the fallout from his disappearance grows by the day.
It is now widely believed that Mr Khashoggi was killed in the building by members of a 15-strong Saudi regime hit squad that had flown into the city earlier the same day.
On Monday, police and prosecutors inspected the consulate building in Istanbul for more than eight hours.
Now Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said they found fresh paint in the building where Mr Khashoggi vanished.
Turkish officials believe he was killed and dismembered in the consulate. According to reports, the government has an audio recording which they have shared as evidence with Saudi Arabia and the US.
Yesterday, it was alleged that a recording suggested the journalist had had his fingers cut off one by one while still alive.
A former adviser to the inner circle of the autocratic House of Saud, rulers of the super-wealthy desert kingdom, Mr Khashoggi had become an emigre critic of its abuses. The Sauds wanted him ‘out of the picture’, he recently told a journalist.
They have succeeded, but only in the physical sense. His image is now all over the internet, newspapers and television screens.
Parallels with the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal by agents of Russia’s GRU military spy agency in Salisbury have been drawn. Here was an authoritarian regime seeking to eliminate a dissident on foreign soil in a brutal and flagrant manner.
The state-owned TV network Al Arabiya has claimed the 15 Saudis who arrived in the area on the day of Mr Khashoggi’s disappearance were tourists.
But while Vladimir Putin’s Russia is hostile to Western liberal democracies, Mr Khashoggi’s reported murder and dismemberment using a bone saw – ‘like Pulp Fiction’ – seems to have taken place on the orders of a friend of the West – someone who even took tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace and was hosted at Downing Street as recently as March when a potential £65million UK-Saudi investment partnership was signed.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – known as ‘MBS’ – is effectively Saudi Arabia’s ruler. He has been lauded for his ‘liberalisation’ of the Kingdom.
Saudi women are now allowed to drive. Cinemas have opened. Yet behind this window-dressing there lies a more unpalatable truth: The key Western ally in the Arab Middle East heads a murderous regime that has cracked down on human rights activists despite granting some freedoms.
Now, perhaps, the Saudis have gone too far – the Turks are sure a murder has taken place.
No doubt if audio recordings do exist, they will have been on the agenda on Tuesday after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Saudi Arabia for urgent talks with King Salman.
It was reported on the same day that the Saudis were preparing to admit they killed Mr Khashoggi when an interrogation went too far. But last night, no such admission was forthcoming.
Mr Pompeo will have done his homework and know this is not the first time the Saudis stand accused of seeking out enemies of the regime with violent intent. Over 15 years, other high-profile domestic critics have been plucked from exile by the kingdom, as we shall see.
First, though, let us look at what is known about the final days and hours of the unfortunate Jamal Khashoggi.
Since last June, the 59-year-old had been resident in America, near Washington DC, having gone into self-imposed exile because of his clashes with the Saudi regime. But he did not intend to stay in America, it seems. His ambition was to remarry and settle in Turkey. That ambition may have been the death of him. Turkey does not allow polygamous marriages. So Mr Khashoggi had to apply for the paperwork to prove his divorce from his first wife to marry his 36-year-old Turkish fiancee. That could be done only at the consulate in Istanbul.
He first visited the consulate on September 28, when he inquired about obtaining the requisite document verifying his divorce. He was told that the consulate would be unable to provide what he needed that day, but he could return the following week.
He left the building with the phone number of an intelligence official who had helped him.
Hatice Cengiz, his fiancee, said the meeting with consular staff was ‘positive’ and they ‘welcomed him warmly and assured him that the necessary paperwork would come through’.
He was told to return four days later to collect the documentation. Four days in which a suspected murder could be planned.
At 3.28am on October 2 – just hours before Mr Khashoggi disappeared – a Gulfstream IV business jet HZ-SK2, belonging to Sky Prime Aviation Services, a Riyadh aviation firm with links to the Saudi regime, touched down at Ataturk airport in Istanbul.
It is thought to have carried nine Saudi officials and intelligence officers. One has since been identified by dissidents as Lt-Colonel Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, head of forensic evidence at the Saudi general security department, an expert in crime scenes.
Several were filmed on CCTV at passport control nine minutes later. One group checked into the five-star Movenpick hotel, close to the consulate, at 5.05am. The others went to the Wyndham Grand. They were booked for three nights but only stayed for hours.
At 9.30am, several left the Movenpick. That morning, Mr Khashoggi called the consulate and was told the papers would be ready that afternoon. His appointment was scheduled for 1pm.
At 12.30pm Turkish staff at the consulate left for lunch. It has been claimed that they were told to take the afternoon off because of a high-level diplomatic meeting later.
WhatsApp records show Mr Khashoggi last viewed his messages on his US mobile at 1.06pm.
As stated, at 1.14pm a CCTV camera at the consulate entrance recorded his arrival. What the men allegedly waiting for him had probably not anticipated was that he would arrive with his fiancée.
Crucially, she said he handed her his mobile phone and told her to call an adviser to President Erdogan if anything happened to him. He was clearly still concerned for his safety. She told him she would wait near the front entrance for him. ‘Fine, my darling,’ he said, before heading into the building.
Two hours later, at 3.08pm, vehicles with diplomatic plates left the consulate with Saudi officials inside. A black Mercedes Vito with tinted windows, and another vehicle drove to consul-general Mohammed al-Otaibi’s residence.
They arrived at 3.10pm and remained for several hours.
As 4pm passed and still no sign of her fiance, Miss Cengiz was ‘overcome with fear and concern’.
She asked about him in the consular building and was told he’d already left, possibly without her noticing. She called Yasin Atkay, the adviser to the Turkish President her fiancé had mentioned, who was one his oldest friends. At 5.15pm a second Sky Prime Aviation Services Gulfstream jet, HZ-SK1, carrying six Saudi officials landed at Ataturk airport. Fifteen men linked to the alleged Khashoggi operation were now in Istanbul. They reportedly included special forces, intelligence and other military officers.
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