The order to murder Saudi journalist and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi came from “the highest levels” of the Riyadh government, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday in a Washington Post op-ed.
“We know that the perpetrators are among the 18 suspects detained in Saudi Arabia. We also know that those individuals came to carry out their orders: Kill Khashoggi and leave,” he wrote.
“Finally, we know that the order to kill Khashoggi came from the highest levels of the Saudi government.”
Erdogan added that he did “not believe for a second” that Saudi’s King Salman had ordered the hit on Khashoggi, who was murdered at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
Meanwhile, the fiancee of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi called Friday for President Donald Trump to back Turkey’s efforts to investigate his death and recover his body.
Khashoggi-a US resident and contributor to The Washington Post-was killed in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2, where he had gone to obtain paperwork for his upcoming marriage to Hatice Cengiz, who was left waiting for him outside.
“I would like to send this message to Mr Trump: I would like him to support Turkey’s legal efforts in trying to bring light to the situation and to discover the whereabouts of his body,” Cengiz said in a recorded message broadcast at a memorial for Khashoggi in Washington.
She has previously said she was “extremely disappointed” with the response of various countries’ leadership to the killing, especially that of the US.
Trump sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh and Ankara in October for talks with both regimes’ leaders over Khashoggi, and even dismissed the Saudi response to the columnist’s death as “one of the worst cover-ups” in history.
But he has repeatedly stressed that his priority is preserving the decades-old US-Saudi alliance and protecting major arms sales to the kingdom.
“Today is November 2nd. It’s been exactly one month since we lost Jamal,” said Cengiz.
“Nothing has relieved me of the pain from the atrocity I experienced. The most important reason for this is because his corpse has still not been found,” she said.
