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ISTANBUL – More than a week after the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia sent a team of experts to remove evidence of the crime, under the pretext of contributing to the investigation, announced on Monday a senior Turkish official twist in a case that caused an international tumult.
A pro-government newspaper, Sabah, has published news of the Saudi clean-up team and photographs of two of its members, identified as a chemist and a toxicologist, who went to the Saudi consulate Saudi Arabia where Mr. Khashoggi was killed.
The top Turkish official confirmed the main details of the report and said that the Saudi team had been sent with the knowledge of senior Saudi officials. The two men went to Turkey for the sole purpose of concealing the evidence of the murder before the Turkish police was allowed to search the premises, said the official in comments relayed by email.
The two men were identified as the chemist Ahmad Abdulaziz al-Jonabi and the toxicologist Khaled Yahya al-Zahrani, who was part of a team of Saudi investigators who spent several days in Turkey visiting the consulate and at the consul's residence. the investigation into the disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi, reported the newspaper.
The Turkish official confirmed the names of both individuals and said that they were part of a cleaning crew. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, according to the rules of his office.
The clean-up team arrived in Istanbul on October 11, nine days after Khashoggi's death, and visited the consulate every day from October 12 to 17, according to Sabah. Turkish investigators have not been allowed to enter the consulate, which is considered a Saudi sovereign territory, until October 15. Sabah published photographs of Mr. Jonabi and Mr. Zahrani coming out of the consulate's entrance and also published photographs showing the editor of the newspaper, Abdurrahman Simsek, said he had received shots fired by cameras at the passport control of the airport.
The men arrived the same day as a Saudi delegation meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on October 11, when Turkish officials had asked to know what had happened to Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the government. Saudi resident in the United States. wrote opinion pieces for the Washington Post. He entered the consulate on October 2 for a meeting arranged in advance to collect papers allowing him to marry his Turkish fiance, and was never seen again.
When the group identified as a clean-up team was in Turkey, the Saudi authorities still insisted that Mr. Khashoggi, 59, had left the consulate safely and did not know where he was. They then acknowledged that he had been killed at the consulate, first describing his death as being the accidental result of a fight, and later the premeditated appellant.
Turkey has identified a team of 15 Saudi officials accused of being the perpetrators of the murder. They arrived in Turkey a few hours before Mr. Khashoggi's disappearance and departed the same day. Some of the 15 proved to be security agents close to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and were among the best forensic scientists.
