Saudi Arabia says Khashoggi's murder was premeditated in the latest reversal

The Saudi prosecutor said Thursday that Jamal Khashoggi had been killed as part of a planned operation, citing information received from Turkish investigators in Istanbul, according to a statement from the kingdom's foreign ministry.

This is the latest turnaround by Saudi authorities, who said last week that Khashoggi was accidentally killed in a duel at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul by "rogue" agents. President Donald Trump initially said the explanation was credible, but in recent days she has expressed doubts, calling it "the worst cover-up ever".

According to the statement, a joint Saudi and Turkish investigation team "reported that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with premeditated intent".

The announcement underscored the growing pressure on Saudi Arabia to fully illuminate the killing of Khashoggi, after his earlier explanations were contradicted by Turkey and skeptically aroused by the US, an ally. close to Saudi Arabia.

Yet neither Trump nor Saudi Arabia have been willing to involve the Saudi leadership in the journalist's assassination. US intelligence officials and lawmakers, as well as the European Union, said it was unlikely that an operation aimed at a critic of the royal court in a foreign country would have been ordered to Unbeknownst to senior Saudi officials.

Thursday's announcement comes days after CIA director Gina Haspel traveled to Turkey to listen to the audio that allegedly captured the journalist's murder, giving a key member of Trump's cabinet access to the central evidence that Turkey had used to assert that the murder was planned.

It also happened two days after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered a speech calling the killing of Khashoggi "brutal" and "planned" while demanding the extradition of his perpetrators to Turkey.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not specify what led the Saudi prosecutor to draw this conclusion, but only that it was based on information shared by Turkish investigators working with Saudi officials in Turkey. According to the statement, the Saudi prosecutor will continue his investigation on the basis of new information.

Shortly after Khashoggi's disappearance on October 2, while he was retrieving a document from the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, the Turkish authorities claimed that he had been a victim of torture. premeditated murder by 15 Saudi agents sent to Turkey as part of a mission to permanently silence the journalist of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Saudi Arabia initially denied knowing Khashoggi's fate, but last week she arrested 18 people and fired five top officials after a preliminary investigation revealed that he had was killed during a shootout at the consulate during a botched intelligence operation.

The arrests were accompanied by an announcement that King Salman was placing his son, Mohammed, responsible for the restructuring of the Saudi intelligence apparatus, which ended the speculation that the Crown Prince would be punished.

Mohammed denied any prior knowledge of the mission and on Wednesday called the journalist's murder a "heinous crime".

Another sign that the kingdom is seeking to contain the widespread fallout, Salah Khashoggi, the eldest son of Jamal Khashoggi, has left Saudi Arabia, announced Thursday two relatives of the family. The son, a US citizen and Saudi man photographed and receiving condolences from Salman and Mohammed on Tuesday, had already been prevented from leaving.

The photos of his meeting with the King and Crown Prince were published by the Saudi government with the obvious purpose of showing their sympathy. Instead, the photo sparked social media scorn as critics accused them of exploiting the grieving son.

Turkey has long rejected the Saudi claim of accidental death and lobbied the kingdom to concede that Khashoggi had been deliberately targeted for killing.

Turkish officials have dismissed Saudi Arabia's ability to conduct a credible investigation, knowing that the royal court was at the origin of the operation. Officials noted that two of Mohammed's closest aides had been dismissed last week when the kingdom declared that Khashoggi had died as a result of a fight with his bare hands.

"We have been arguing from the beginning that the Khashoggi assassination was premeditated," a senior Turkish official told the Washington Post shortly after the announcement made by Saudi Arabia on Thursday. "We owe it to Jamal and his relatives to reveal the whole truth." The criminal investigation continues in Turkey.

Khashoggi, 59, was an opinion writer for The Post who lived in Virginia after leaving Saudi Arabia out of fear for his safety. He intended to settle in Istanbul and marry his Turkish bride when he was arrested and killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia. His remains have not been found yet.

Also on Thursday, the European Union issued a new condemnation of the murder of Khashoggi and reiterated his skepticism that it could have been perpetrated without Muhammad's knowledge.

The European Parliament on Thursday adopted a non-binding resolution calling for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia at the EU-wide level. The resolution came just days after Germany became the first Western government to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the world 's largest importer of arms.

French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May spoke by phone with King Salman, according to a statement issued by the Saudi Foreign Ministry Thursday, a few hours after the vote on the European Parliament resolution.

According to a reading of the conversation at the Elysee, Macron asked his Saudi counterpart to clarify what had happened to Khashoggi and told him that France considered freedom of expression and freedom of the press as "an essential priority".

But Britain and France have not stopped suspending their arms sales to the desert kingdom.

Thanks to a steady stream of leaks in Turkish and foreign media, Turkish officials have convincingly proven that Saudi agents intend to kill Khashoggi, dismember him and get rid of his remains. The Turks identified a specialist in Saudi forensics, an expert in mobile autopsies, who went to Istanbul the day Khashoggi planned to visit the consulate. They also photographed Saudi diplomatic vehicles surveying wooded areas a few days before Khashoggi's disappearance.

In addition, these leaks included surveillance footage of a Saudi agent wearing Khashoggi's clothes and a false beard, leaving the consulate in an orchestrated attempt to persuade the investigators to believe that the journalist had safely left the diplomatic mission. as the Saudis originally claimed.

The United States has already taken steps to punish suspects arrested or dismissed by Saudi Arabia by revoking their visas.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that he was working with the Treasury Department on the opportunity to impose sanctions on those found responsible for the journalist's death.

It was not clear immediately how Riyadh's Riyadh announcement on Thursday would affect Washington's thinking about bipartisan congressional demands that Saudi Arabia be severely punished – the nation at the center of Trump's policy in the Middle East.

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James McAuley in Paris and Quentin Ariès in Brussels contributed to this report.