TEHRAN, October 07 - Turkish police believe that prominent Saudi journalist and critic Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi mission in Istanbul after he went missing on Tuesday, according to an unnamed government official.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - "Based on their initial findings, the police believe that the journalist was killed by a team especially sent to Istanbul and who left the same day," the official told AFP on Saturday.
It came hours after police confirmed that around 15 Saudis, including officials, arrived in Istanbul on two flights on Tuesday and were at the consulate at the same time as Khashoggi.
The Washington Post contributor had gone to the consulate on an administrative errand but "did not come back out" of the building, police had told the state-run Anadolu news agency.
A senior Turkish police source told MEE that Khashoggi had been "brutally tortured, killed and cut into pieces. Everything was videotaped to prove the mission had been accomplished and the tape was taken out of the country".
On the back of the preliminary investigation, Ankara announced Saturday it had opened an official probe into his disappearance.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency, quoting an unnamed official at the Istanbul consulate, denied the reports of Khashoggi's murder.
"The official strongly denounced these baseless allegations," the agency wrote, adding that a team of Saudi investigators were in Turkey working with local authorities.
Reacting to news of the alleged murder, the journalist's Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said on Twitter she "did not believe he has been killed".
In his columns, Khashoggi has been critical of some policies of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Riyadh's intervention in the war in Yemen.
The former government adviser, who turns 60 on October 13, has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since last year to avoid possible arrest.
Source: AFP, MEE
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