Every day the mysterious disappearance of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi after visiting the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul is overgrown with new details and rumors.

Picture credits : GETTY IMAGES

On October 2, Khashoggi, known for his criticism of the Saudi authorities and the country's crown prince personally, entered the building of the Saudi consulate in Turkey. Since then, no one has seen him.

Turkey claims that the journalist was killed, and for this, 15 secret service agents flew from Saudi Arabia to Istanbul. Saudi authorities deny their involvement.

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The bulk of information about the murder comes from the Turkish authorities and the media under their control, as well as from anonymous sources in the American press. But this information has a lot of white spots and contradictions.

Are there any records of the murder of Hasoggi?

Already at the beginning of the investigation, the media, citing the investigation and Turkish officials, said that they had audio and video recordings at their disposal, proving that Khashoggi had been killed.

According to the loyal government of the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak, the Turkish authorities have several audio recordings , which can be heard how Khashoggi was tortured before being killed.

According to the publication, the audiotape heard the voice of the consul of Saudi Arabia Mohammed al-Otaybi, who appeals to the alleged killers of Khasoggi: "Do it outside. You will create problems for me."

doors of the Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul

Another Turkish edition, Middle East Eye, citing a source who heard the audio tape, reports that the murder took seven minutes. Moreover, Khasoggi was allegedly started to dismember while still alive, injecting him with some kind of drug,

But neither the video nor the audio recordings of the murder have been published anywhere. In the Turkish press published a still image from the recording of surveillance cameras. All information about the content of the records comes from the Turkish government and related sources.

According to the New York Times , Turkish officials hint that they do not publish evidence so as not to "give out the sources of their intelligence, including agents and electronic intelligence." But these words are still impossible to verify.

Could Khasoggi's smartwatch be the source of the recording?

The Turkish newspaper Sabah, again referring to "reliable intelligence sources," reported that Khashoggi left his iPhone for the bride, who was waiting for him outside, but took the Apple Watch with a smart watch and turned on the sound recording.

As a result, this recording, according to the publication, automatically loaded into the iCloud cloud storage, and the Saudi intelligence agents, noticing that the clock was recording sound, could only remove some of the recordings. At the same time, they allegedly used the hand of the murdered Khasoggi to unlock the fingerprint sensor on the device.

As explained by the correspondent of BBC technology Rory Kehlan-Jones , in this version there are several questionable moments,

First, the Apple Watch is not equipped with a fingerprint sensor. And the phone on which he could be turned on was at the bride of Khasoggi outside.

bride - Hatice Cengiz - waited for him at the consulate for 11 hours

Secondly, after analyzing all possible options for connecting the watch with the phone or offline with the Internet, Kehlan-Jones concludes that the Apple Watch on Khashoggi’s hand could not technically record the sound and transfer it to the cloud storage.

Rory Kehlan-Jones believes that the Apple Watch version has probably become a convenient cover for the methods by which the Turkish authorities could actually receive audio recordings of what is happening in the consulate.

But if this information from the Turkish special services is not reliable, then what reports of the Turkish media, referring to such anonymous sources, can be trusted?

why could Saudi Arabia need Khashoggi?

Khashoggi has a controversial biography. In his youth, he was a friend of Osama bin Laden, joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s. He then worked as media relations adviser to the influential Prince Turki al-Faisal, who in the 2000s was the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the UK, and later to the United States.

Only in recent years has Khasoggi became a critic of the royal family. In 2017, he moved to the United States, from where he began to more actively call for democratic reforms at home.

So far, there is no definite answer, whether only journalism of Khasoggi could have led to his murder and whether the death of the journalist was in the plans of the alleged performers.

CNN sources reported that the interrogation was intended to force Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia, but he refused, and then he was killed. According to CNN, the journalist’s kingdom was suspected of having links with Qatar.

Also, according to the channel, the Saudi authorities have been in contact with Khasoggi since 2017 and offered him to return to the country, but he refused them.

The New York Times, citing an anonymous source, said that Khashoggi died at the hands of an overworked intelligence officer, and the task was to interrogate him and bring him back to Saudi Arabia.

The Washington Post, where a Saudi journalist regularly published its columns, also reported with reference to American intelligence that Saudi officials received orders from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to lure Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia and arrest him.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, whom Khashoggi criticized especially harshly.

In another publication, the Washington Post brought the story of another Saudi émigré who was granted asylum in Canada, Omar Abdulaziz, who collaborated with Khashoggi. According to Abdulaziz, shortly before the disappearance, a publicist found money for a project to create a "detachment of bees" - a network of Internet activists who would oppose pro-government trolls on Twitter in Saudi Arabia.

But information appeared in the Turkish media that contradicted the version of the attempted interrogation. In particular, the Middle East Eye publication, citing the investigation, claims that there were no attempts at Khasoggi’s interrogation at the consulate - he was immediately attacked.

In addition, media reports that Salah Muhammad al-Tubaiki, a specialist from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Saudi Arabia, was well-known in professional circles among the 15 Saudis who arrived in Istanbul were not compatible with the goal of “just interrogate”

why did Khasoggi go inside if he understood the risk?

According to the journalist's bride, Turkish citizen Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi went to the consulate to collect documents confirming his divorce in Saudi Arabia. This was necessary to get married with Cengiz in Turkey, which they had planned for the next day.

According to CNN , Khashoggi met with diplomats from Saudi Arabia in the United States at the embassy in Washington — and were treated politely.

On the other hand, Khashoggy felt there was some risk because he told his bride to go to the police if he did not return within a few hours.

It remains a mystery whether he had real fears for his life and, if so, how serious.

Who are these 15 people who arrived in Istanbul?

Turkish media write that their country's secret services have identified all the arriving Saudi agents.

Seven of them, according to the Middle East Eye , worked to protect the Crown Prince. The passport details of the alleged Saudi agents were also transmitted by the Turkish authorities to the Western media. The New York Times reported that nine of the 15 Saudis were members of the security and government departments of the kingdom.

One of them, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a Saudi diplomat and intelligence officer, was the first secretary at the embassy in London, CNN writes . Moutreb accompanied Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on several trips abroad this year.

Another suspect, Dr. Salah Mohammed al-Tubaiki, who, according to the Turkish press, dismembered the body of Khasoggi, was trained in Australia in 2015. Among other things, he specialized in autopsies in his research activities.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, whom Khashoggi criticized especially harshly.

Saudi television channel Al-Arabiya called these 15 men tourists.

However, on October 18, the Turkish edition of Yeni Safak reported that one of the 15 suspects, Lieutenant of the Air Force of Saudi Arabia, Meshal Saad Albostani, died in a mysterious car accident.

In addition, it is still unclear what the role of most of the alleged Saudi agents was. According to sources from the Middle East Eye edition , three people directly participated in the operation: two people dragged Khashoggi from the consul's office and killed him in another room, and the third, Salah Muhammad al-Tubaiki, dismembered the body. What did the other 12 do?