Saudi Arabia bears responsibility to find out what happened to the body of Jamal Khashoggi, Turkey’s foreign minister said, reiterating Ankara’s stance that it was not King Salman who ordered the killing.
Speaking to reporters in Japan, Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey has further information which it will share when Ankara knows for sure that the investigation has been completed.
Cavusoglu also said it was not possible for a 15-man team to come to Turkey to kill a Saudi citizen without orders.
“This 15-man team did not come to Turkey on their own, they came on orders. Without due orders and permissions, 15 people cannot come from Saudi Arabia to kill their own citizen,” Cavusoglu said.
“I think it is Saudi Arabia’s responsibility to find out what happened to Khashoggi’s body and inform us about it, as the 15-man team are still in Saudi Arabia,” he added.
Men identified
Saudi Arabia sent a two-man “clean-up team” to erase evidence of Khashoggi’s murder a week after he disappeared at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, a Turkish official said on Monday.
The men were identified as Ahmed Abdulaziz al-Jonabi and Khaled Yahya al-Zahrani, saying they arrived in Turkey as part of an 11-person team sent to carry out the inspections with Turkish officials.
Saudi Arabia had told the United Nations on Monday it would prosecute those responsible for the journalist’s murder.
Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist critical of the Saudi government and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
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