Does Melo find the Khashoggi’s body?
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- Does Melo find the Khashoggi’s body?
- President Tayyip Erdoğan, who has demanded more information from Saudi Arabia, said on Tuesday Istanbul's chief prosecutor had asked Mojeb to disclose who sent the team from Riyadh which is suspected of involvement in the killing.
- The Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor Saud Al Mojeb completed his inspections in Turkey after he held three days of talks that yielded no results with Turkish officials on the killing of Khashoggi. Mojeb carried out inspections at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was killed earlier this month, and held meetings with Turkey's public prosecutor and Turkish intelligence officials. No clear information was obtained from Mojeb regarding 18 suspects arrested in Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi’s death. Questions about the assassination squad were not answered satisfactorily. Last week Mojeb contradicted previous Saudi statements, saying Khashoggi's killing was premeditated. Riyadh says it has arrested 18 suspects, including a team sent to Istanbul hours before Khashoggi's death, but has rejected Turkey's call for their extradition. Prosecutor Al Mojeb arrived in Istanbul on Oct. 28 night and held talks on Oct. 29 with Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, İrfan Fidan, days after he contradicted weeks of Saudi statements by saying that Khashoggi’s killing was premeditated. Turkish officials were in “a deep distrust” toward Mojeb as he repeatedly refused to answer questions about the whereabouts of Khashoggi’s body. Similarly, a senior Turkish official told on Oct. 31 that Saudi officials appeared unwilling to “genuinely cooperate” with Turkey. On his departure, Mojeb invited the Istanbul investigators to Riyadh to share evidence collected so far with counterparts in the Saudi capital and interrogate the suspects under Saudi supervision.
- The Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office has said that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was strangled right after he entered the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, while also confirming earlier media reports that his body was “dismembered.” In a written press statement on Oct. 31, the chief prosecutor’s office noted that talks with Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor Saud Al Mojeb “ended with no concrete results” and the Saudi authorities noted that they did not release any earlier statement pointing to a “local collaborator” who disposed Khashoggi’s body. Jamal Khashoggi was strangled as soon as he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, then his body dismembered and destroyed in a premeditated killing, the city’s chief prosecutor has said in the first official confirmation of how the Saudi journalist died “The victim’s body was dismembered and destroyed following his death by suffocation,” Wednesday’s statement said, bolstering Turkish investigators’ line of thought that Khashoggi’s remains could have been disposed of at the nearby consul general’s house, dissolved in acid or dumped in a well on the property. Fidan’s office was clearly disappointed in the lack of progress: in two meetings over two consecutive days repeated requests for the extradition of the 18 Saudi suspects for trial in Turkey, details on the “planning stage” of the killing and identity of the local collaborator were not answered. The Saudi prosecutor had promised “same day” answers, the statement said. While Saudi Arabia has admitted that the dissident writer’s killing when he visited on 2 October to collect documents for his upcoming wedding was premeditated, it has not explained how. Searches of the diplomatic mission where Khashoggi died and the consul general’s house, where it is believed his body was taken, have faced several delays from Saudi investigators: surfaces inside the consulate had been freshly painted by the time Turkish investigators were allowed in, and cars of interest to the criminal investigation had been thoroughly cleaned.
- Melo, the Istanbul Police Department’s cadaver dog, allegedly reacted to a wardrobe inside the Saudi consulate, and was then denied permission to search the residence of the Saudi consul-general. The cadaver dog barked in front of a wardrobe at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and was a part of the Turkish team that searched the premises where slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared on Oct. 2. It is believed that Khashoggi’s remains, or parts of it, could have been stashed in the wardrobe at some point. Melo has assisted in missing persons cases in Turkey’s Mersin, Adana, Hatay and Denizli in which the cadaver dog quickly located the bodies.
