Missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey by a 15-member team dispatched by Riyadh specifically to murder him, two Turkish officials tell the Washington Post. "It was a preplanned murder," one says. A third backs up that account. "The initial assessment of the Turkish police is that Mr. Khashoggi has been killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul," the official tells the AP. "We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate." Khashoggi friend Turan Kislakci told the AP on Sunday that officials told him, "He was killed, make your funeral preparations. We called a few other places, these are lower officials, but they said: 'We have evidence he was killed in a barbaric way.'" Khashoggi was made to "faint," then dismembered, officials told him.
Khashoggi, who wrote for the Post and often critically of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was at the consulate to complete paperwork so that he could marry his Turkish fiance. Saudi Arabia, which contends that Khashoggi left the consulate without incident, pushed back on the report, saying that an official at the consulate "expressed doubt that they came from Turkish officials that are informed of the investigation or are authorized to comment on the issue." (The Post earlier protested Khashoggi's disappearance by running a blank column in the space where his would have appeared.)
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