Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared after entering his country’s consulate in Istanbul, on October 2, was murdered in extremely horrifying fashion, a report published by London-based news outlet Middle East Eye said on Tuesday.
The MME report which was edited by former veteran Guardian foreign affairs correspondent David Hearst said that Saudi agents never planned to “interrogate” Khashoggi, as reported by the CNN, but instead were under orders specifically to kill the journalist.
The agents’ assignment was “carried out in grisly and sadistic fashion, in a torture-murder that took a full seven minutes to complete,” the report said.
“The anonymous source, who claimed to have heard a recording captured on Khashoggi’s Apple watch, told Middle East Eye that Khashoggi was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2,” the Daily Mail reported, in a summary of the MEE report.
“According to the source, the tape reveals that Khashoggi was dragged from the Consul General’s office to a table next door in a study where he was surgically dismembered.”
The torture-killing of Khashoggi lasted seven full minutes, and was carried out by Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, “who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department,” according to MEE.
Tubaigy was one of a 15-member squad of Saudi agents who flew into Istanbul on two private jets earlier the same day of Khashoggi’s disappearance. He was one of the group named by Turkish officials on October 11, according to the Washington Post.
In a macabre detail reported by the MEE source, “Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive….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.”
Source: Middle East Eye
