Khashoggi’s death took 7 minutes – ‘Middle East Eye report’

Readers Discretion Required

It took seven minutes for Jamal Khashoggi to die, a Turkish source who has listened in full to an audio recording of the Saudi journalist’s last moments told Middle East Eye.

Khashoggi was dragged from the consul-general’s office at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and onto the table of his study next door, the Turkish source said.

Horrendous screams were then heard by a witness downstairs, the source said.

“The consul himself was taken out of the room. There was no attempt to interrogate him. They had come to kill him,” the source told MEE. The screaming stopped when Khashoggi – who was last seen entering the Saudi consulate on 2 October – was injected with an as yet unknown substance.

Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet. Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said. The killing took seven minutes, the source said.

As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same. “When I do this job, I listen to music. You should do [that] too,” Tubaigy was recorded as saying, the source told MEE. A three-minute version of the audio tape has been given to Turkish newspaper Sabah, but they have yet to release it.

Meanwhile: 

Pompeo met with both Turkish FM Mevlut Cavusoglu and President Erdogan in separate meetings that each lasted roughly 40 minutes. Cavusoglu said dialogue with Pompeo was “beneficial and fruitful”, according to reports from Turkey.

In his strongest statement yet backing Saudi Arabia, US President Donald Trump criticised rapidly mounting global condemnation of Riyadh over the mystery of the missing journalist. In an interview with The Associated Press, Trump compared the case of Khashoggi to the allegations of sexual assault levelled against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaughduring his confirmation hearing.

“I think we have to find out what happened first,” Trump said. “Here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent. I don’t like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I’m concerned.”

Trump’s remarks were his most robust defence yet of the Saudis, a US ally he has made central to his Middle East agenda. The comments put the president at odds with other key allies and with some leaders in his Republican Party who have condemned the Saudi leadership for what they say is an obvious role in the Khashoggi case.

Trump appeared willing to resist the pressure to follow suit, accepting Saudi denials and their pledge to investigate.

After Khashoggi’s disappearance, there has been mounting criticism of some of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s moves.

Despite Western concerns about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, Trump still says he is unwilling to pull out of multi-billion-dollar weapons sales deals with Riyadh.