Skepticism about Saudi Arabia's presentation in the Khashoggi case – Politics –

The prosecutor's office in Riyadh presented its latest version of the events on Thursday. According to the deputy intelligence chief, Ahmed al-Asiri had ordered an operation to bring ex-ex-ex-Khashgi exile back to Saudi Arabia in 2017. The head of the "negotiating team" has so made the decision to kill the government critic.

The columnist of the "Washington Post" was stunned, killed and wounded in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and then the body parts were handed over to an badistant outside the consulate, the prosecutor said. . Eleven suspects were charged with the crime, five of them being required to pay the death penalty. The suspicion that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the crime had been rejected by the prosecution.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called the statements "insufficient" and insisted on the intentional nature of the act. The United States has imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi suspects, including alleged leader Maher Abdulasis Mutreb, Saudi Arabian consul general Mohammed al-Otaibi and Saudi media advisor Saud al-Kahtani.

Turkish columnist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote in the newspaper "Hürriyet", a sound recording of the fact proves that there is no attempt at negotiation. Khashoggi had been strangled immediately after entering the consulate on 2 October. In addition, there is a second 15-minute sound recording of how members of the murder team followed their murder plan before the act.

There are also recordings of telephone conversations that would have brought the members of the murder squad afterwards with interlocutors abroad, wrote Selvi. The Turkish media had previously reported that Chief of Operations Mutreb had repeatedly telephoned Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman's office manager. Mutreb had several times accompanied the heir to the throne during trips abroad.

A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said that Riad's statements had been "a first step", but that the act was to be "fully and completely clarified". Neither the crime nor the context or the question of "ultimate responsibility" has been clarified up to now. At the same time, the speaker stressed that the German Federal Government rejected the death penalty "in all circumstances, as an inhuman punishment".

In Istanbul, a memorial service for Khashoggi was organized on Friday. Dozens of people in front of the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul have delivered a traditional prayer that is recited in Islam when the body of a deceased person is destroyed or lost. The ceremony was organized by a group of Khashoggi friends who had been demonstrating for several weeks in Istanbul.

"Convinced that his body will never be found, we decided to organize this prayer for the salvation of Jamal's soul," said Fatih Öke, leader of the Turkish Arab Media Association, which included Khashoggi. Participant Ibrahim Peker said the ceremony was also "a message to the world that this murder will not go unpunished, justice will come."