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Saudi Arabia sold building where Khashoggi was killed: Report
Saudi Arabia has sold the building housing its diplomatic mission in Istanbul where Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed last year, a Turkish broadcaster said.
According to Habeturk TV, the building, located in the upscale Levent neighbourhood, was sold more than a month ago to an undisclosed buyer for a third of its value.
"A new building for the consulate had already been purchased in Sariyer district, which also hosts the US Consulate," it added.
The Turkish broadcaster said that Saudi authorities would have needed approval from Turkey's foreign ministry before proceeding with the property's sale.
However, an official at the Turkish foreign ministry told the Middle East Eye that Turkey had no information to confirm the sale.
Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor who was living in the United States, had gone to his country's consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, to collect documents for his planned wedding before he was killed and his body dismembered.
Turkish media reports suggested his remains, which have never been found, were dissolved in acid.
Sources told Al Jazeera there was circumstantial evidence suggesting Khashoggi's remains were incinerated in the garden of the consular general's residence, 300 metres from the consulate.
The Saudi security team that visited Turkey immediately after Khashoggi's murder had prepared a technical report that said they could not discover all the bugs in the consulate and, therefore, a new building was needed, Haberturk TV said.
"The Saudis are also trying to sell the consul general's official residence, which is located very close to the consulate. But they couldn't find any buyer yet."
The following dialogue took place between journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the “negotiation” team before he was killed in the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul on 2 October last year. The report, which was published by Turkish newspaper Sabah, disclosed part of the audio recordings of what happened inside the Consulate. This is the first time audio recordings depicting what happened to Khashoggi are being published.
A judge in New York ordered federal agencies to produce thousands of pages of documents pertaining to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and U.S. resident who was slain in his country's consulate in Turkey last year. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer instructed the departments of State and Defense to produce some 5,000 pages monthly related to the killing of the Washington Post columnist. The judge said that the information about Khashoggi's disappearance and death is of "considerable public importance."
ON WEDNESDAY, the United Nations released the results of a five-month investigation into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Utilizing recordings and forensic evidence from inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was killed, the 100-page report details the grisly final moments of the journalist’s life. The report suggested that Khashoggi first struggled with his killers, after which he “could have been injected with a sedative and then suffocated using a plastic bag.”
