Khashoggi investigation: Turkish police search a villa near Istanbul

YALOVA, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish police raided Monday in a secluded villa located in a coastal area southeast of Istanbul, as part of the investigation into the badbadination Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, officials said.

Authorities believe that one of the Saudi agents who allegedly participated in the murder of the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, Mansour Othman Abahussain, called the owner of the villa a day before the killing, the Attorney General's office announced. Istanbul.

The owner of the property is a Saudi national, Mohammed Ahmed Alfaozan, who was codenamed "Ghozan," he said. Two officials told Reuters that Alfaozan had bought the property near Yalova on the Sea of ​​Marmara about three years ago.

The phone call allegedly involved the destruction or disappearance of body parts, the prosecutor's office said.

Police used sniffer dogs to search the garden of the villa and the nearby wooded area, according to Reuters agency cameramen present at the scene. Last month, officials told Reuters that Khashoggi's killers may have dumped his remains in a rural area near Yalova, 90 km southeast of Istanbul.

They had interrupted the research on Monday night.

Authorities have already carried out inspections at the consulate of the Kingdom and at the Consul General's residence in Istanbul as part of an investigation into the murder of the journalist, a Washington Post columnist and an eminent critic of the Saudi government.

The badbadination of Khashoggi has severely strained Saudi Arabia's ties to the image of its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Arabia stated that the prince had no prior knowledge of the murder. After proposing many conflicting explanations, Riyadh later stated that Khashoggi was killed and his body dismembered when negotiations to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia failed.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the murder was ordered by the highest Saudi authorities, but probably not by King Salman, instead focusing on the 33-year-old crown prince.

US. President Donald Trump said last week that Washington would remain an "unwavering partner" of Saudi Arabia despite the announcement that Prince Mohammed would have known about Khashoggi 's badbadination plan.