This is the last known image of the Saudi journalist feared murdered after going missing during a visit to his country’s consulate in Turkey last week.
Jamal Khashoggi, 59, entered the Saudi Arabian consulate to obtain official documents for his upcoming wedding, but ‘never came back out again’, and police believe was ‘tortured and cut to pieces’ inside the building.
Turkish authorities are now searching for a black van seen on CCTV being ‘loaded with boxes’, which they believe was used to transport Khashoggi’s remains from the consulate.
Khashoggi, a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s policies, was ‘brutally tortured, murdered and cut to pieces’, a police source told Middle East Eye.
‘Everything was videotaped to prove the mission had been accomplished and the tape was taken out of the country,’ the source said.
Police said earlier 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.
They say the ‘death squad’ left the consulate in a convoy of cars – including the black van – and later flew out of Turkey back to Saudi Arabia.
‘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,’ a government source told AFP on Saturday.
The journalist’s Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said he had visited the consulate to receive an official document for their marriage
Saudi Arabia has denied the allegations as ‘baseless,’ but has offered no evidence to show he ever left the building. In his newspaper columns for the Washington Post, 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, whose 60th birthday approaches this week, has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since last year to avoid possible arrest.