Turkey and the United States on Thursday ratcheted up the pressure on Saudi Arabia to explain how a journalist vanished after entering its Istanbul consulate last week, with US lawmakers warning that military ties were at risk.
US President Donald Trump became more forceful in his call for answers from Saudi Arabia but he also rebuffed calls from the US Congress to show more resolve, saying he would not jeopardize arms sales to the close ally.
Khashoggi, a Saudi national whose articles have criticized Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has not been seen since October 2 when he went to the consulate in Istanbul to obtain official documents for his upcoming marriage.
Turkish officials have said he was killed — reportedly by a 15-man “assassination team” that arrived on two planes — but Riyadh insists that he left the consulate safely.
On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that the Turkish government has told US officials it has audio and video recordings which show how Khashoggi was “interrogated, tortured and then murdered” inside the consulate before his body was dismembered.
“The voice recording from inside the embassy lays out what happened to Jamal after he entered,” the Post quoted one unnamed source as saying of the content of the recordings. “You can hear his voice and the voices of men speaking Arabic. You can hear how he was interrogated, tortured and then murdered.”
The Post was careful to point out that it is not certain that US officials had seen or heard the footage, but appeared to have been told about its content by Turkish counterparts who are loathe to release the footage because it may show how Turkey spies on foreign missions.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his most extensive remarks on Khashoggi, challenged Saudi Arabia on Thursday to provide CCTV images to back up its account.
“Is it possible there were no camera systems in a consulate, in an embassy?” he asked. “If a bird flew, or a fly or a mosquito appeared, the systems would capture this; they (Saudi Arabia) have the most cutting-edge systems,” he was quoted as telling Turkish reporters.
The consulate said CCTV cameras were not working that day and dismissed the murder claims as “baseless.”