The Jamal Khashoggi disappearance case has taken a turn for the worse. A tape purportedly containing the last moments of the journalist was accessed by Turkish media. In the tape Khashoggi can be heard screaming and crying as he was subjected to torture and then death.
A Turkish source who heard the tape has revealed what he heard on the tape to media in the middle east. According to him, Khashoggi was dragged from the consul-general's office at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and onto the table of his study next door.
Witnesses, who were downstairs, then heard horrendous screams coming from the room. The source said, "There was no attempt to interrogate him. They had come to kill him."
Khashoggi was then injected with an unknown substance, after which the screams stopped.
Khashoggi was reported missing by his Turkish fiance after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and failed to come out on October 2. His disappearance led to strained diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Khashoggi was a columnist with the Washington Post and was openly critical of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
According to the source, killing of Khashoggi took only seven minutes. Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same.
“When I do this job, I listen to music. You should do [that] too,” Tubaigy was recorded as saying.
A Turkish source told the New York Times that Tubaigy was equipped with a bone saw. He is listed as the president of the Saudi Fellowship of Forensic Pathology and a member of the Saudi Association for Forensic Pathology.
Saudi officials have denied any involvement in his disappearance and said that he arrived soon after arriving at the consulate.
Meanwhile, the US has asked Turkey for the recording. "We have asked for it, if it exists," President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House.
The Washington Post has published Khashoggi's last column titled 'What the Arab world needs most is free expression', in which he strongly criticises the freedom of press in Arab countries.
