Alwaght- Footage of surveillance camera outside the Saudi consulate released recently shows that a Saudi operative left the diplomatic building wearing clothes of the assassinated Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi to mislead the security.
The man caught by the camera was one of the 15 agents who were sent to kill Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
CNN, citing a Turkish official, reported: “The same man was seen in Khashoggi's clothing at the city's world-famous Blue Mosque just hours after the journalist was last seen alive entering the consulate on October 2."
The man, according to the Turkish official, is identified as Mustafa al-Madani, a Saudi national, and is part of what investigators call a hit squad sent to assassinate the self-exiled critic of the ruling Saudi family, particularly the bin Salman’s policies both at home and abroad.
Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get papers for his planned marriage to his finance, Hatice Cingiz, a Turkish citizen. He never came out of the consulate.
The mystery surrounding his fate continued for two weeks, until Saturday when Saudi Arabia broke the silence and said he was killed in the consulate during a clash broke out when he entered the place.
Before that Riyadh denied that it even knew what happened to the journalist, saying that he left after doing his work at the consulate. On October 20, however, it shifted its story, saying that Khashoggi was killed by mistake during an interrogation. Prince Mohammed tried to distance himself from the assassination. Upon the Saturday announcement, he sacked his intelligence chief Ahmed al-Asiri in what many analysts called a move to shift the blame on al-Asiri and provide a shield for himself from consequent aftershocks.
Turkey, however, rejected the Saudi account, saying that it had voice tapes proving that Washington Post columnist was tortured, killed, and then dismembered by a bone saw. A Turkish official, who talked to the New York Times on condition of anonymity, said that the assassination operation was a personal order by the crown prince.
The case has drawn an international focus, with many people protesting outside Saudi diplomatic buildings around the world condemning silencing of the dissents by the prince. Holding posters of Khashoggi, and also of bin Salman with a bone saw and bloody hands, the protestors on Sunday called for Saudi Arabia to hand over his body.
