ISTANBUL — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met on Wednesday with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, trying to resolve the international uproar over the alleged killing of a journalist inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, and said that Saudi officials had promised consequences for anyone — even a member of the royal family — found responsible.
Mr. Pompeo arrived in Ankara, the Turkish capital, as a barrage of new information leaked by unidentified Turkish officials appeared in news outlets, giving gruesome details of what they say are audio recordings of Jamal Khashoggi being assaulted, tortured, killed and dismembered inside the consulate two weeks ago.
A senior Turkish official confirmed to The New York Times that details of the recordings published in a pro-government newspaper were correct, but The Times has not heard the recordings. The Turkish media are largely state-controlled, and the government has used a stream of leaks about Mr. Khashoggi to apply pressure on the Saudis.
After meeting on Tuesday with top Saudi officials, including King Salman and Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Mr. Pompeo told reporters early Wednesday before leaving Riyadh, the Saudi capital: “They made a commitment to hold anyone connected to any wrongdoing that may be found accountable for that. Whether they are a senior officer or official, they promised accountability.”
Asked if that included members of the royal family, he said, “They made no exceptions to who they would hold accountable.”
Several of the people identified by Turkish officials as being among the Saudis who carried out the killing have ties to the crown prince, who is considered the power behind the throne, and Western intelligence officials say that such an operation would have required his blessing. The Turks contend that a team of Saudi officials flew to Istanbul, killed Mr. Khashoggi and disposed of his body, and left the country hours after they arrived.
Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who wrote columns for The Washington Post, entered the consulate on Oct. 2 for a meeting to obtain a document confirming his divorce, to allow him to marry his Turkish fiancée the next day. Saudi officials have said he walked out of the building safe and sound, but no evidence of that has been made public.
Mr. Erdogan has not publicly accused Saudi Arabia of abducting or killing Mr. Khashoggi, but he has demanded answers. A joint Saudi-Turkish inquiry has begun and investigators spent hours searching inside the consulate building Monday night. They have also requested access to search the consulate’s vehicles and the consul’s personal residence.
On Tuesday, Mr. Erdogan said that a focus of the investigation was the possibility that parts of the consulate had been repainted to hide evidence.
In a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast on Sunday, President Trump vowed “severe punishment” if the Saudis were responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance, and he has said he was sending Mr. Pompeo to Saudi Arabia to get to the bottom of the matter. But this week, he has emphasized Saudi denials.
Mr. Pompeo met with Mr. Erdogan for 40 minutes at Ankara’s airport Wednesday morning, along with Turkey’s intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan; Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu; and the national security adviser, Ibrahim Kalin. Mr. Pompeo later held a separate meeting with Mr. Cavusoglu, and he flew out immediately after without making any comment to the news media.
Mr. Cavusoglu described the meeting, which covered the case of Mr. Khashoggi among other issues, as useful and fruitful. “Pompeo said he relayed Trump’s thoughts and concerns to Riyadh,” he said. “We had said before that Saudis should cooperate with us.”
Mr. Cavusoglu said that the Turkish prosecutor was conducting an expansive investigation. But he added that Saudi officials had appeared to obstruct investigators seeking to gain access to the consul’s residence on Tuesday because members of the consul’s family were present.
Investigators would continue to try to gain access, he added. The consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, left Turkey for Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
American officials have said that the Saudis were preparing to say that Mr. Khashoggi was killed accidentally during an interrogation, but there has been no such admission so far.
Turkey has sought American help in getting answers from Saudi Arabia about Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, but despite agreeing to conduct a joint investigation, after King Salman and Mr. Erdogan spoke by phone on Sunday, the two sides remain poles apart. Saudi leaders continue to deny hurting Mr. Khashoggi, and Turkish officials remain firm in their insistence that he was killed.
The pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak reported Wednesday that it had had access to an audio recording apparently made inside the consulate, of the minutes during which Mr. Khashoggi met his end, and said there was more than one recording. Other news organizations reported on descriptions of the recordings provided by Turkish officials.
In one of the recordings, Mr. Otaibi, is heard pleading with the perpetrators to conduct the assault outside the consulate, Yeni Safak reported.
“Do this outside. You will get me in trouble,” the newspaper quotes the consul as saying. “‘If you want to live, shut up!’ is the response,” it added.
Source : Nytimes
