The missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi endured a horrific seven-minute ordeal as he was butchered alive inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, a source has claimed.
According to Reuters, the death squad are reported to have listened to music through headphones to drown out Washington Post columnist Khashoggi’s screams.
The anonymous Turkish source claims to have heard an audio recording of Khashoggi’s grim final moments, recorded on the journalist’s own Apple watch , shortly after he entered the consulate on October 2.
The tape reveals Mr Khashoggi was dragged from the Saudi Consul General’s office onto a table in a next-door study, where he was surgically dismembered while still alive, Middle East Eye reports.
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“The consul himself was taken out of the room. There was no attempt to interrogate him. They had come to kill him,” the source said.
The audio recording is reported to have captured the missing journalist’s dying screams, before he was ‘injected with an unknown drug’ and fell silent.
‘There was no attempt to interrogate him. They had come to kill him,’ the source said.
The source also claimed that Khashoggi’s screams were by witnesses inside the consulate as he was chopped into pieces on the desk.
Missing journalist ‘used Apple Watch to record his torture and death’ inside at Saudi Arabia consulate in Turkey
This follows suggestions that Khashoggi may have been murdered by “rogue killers” during an attempted abduction to take him to Saudi Arabia. It was suggested a snatch squad, possibly unaware of Jamal Khashoggi’s poor health, killed him as he struggled to resist being taken during a botched interrogation.
As pressure intensifies, foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his G7 counterparts have said they are “very troubled” by the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and insist those responsible must be held to account.
Riyadh is a key ally for the West and US President Donald Trump has said it is being treated as “guilty until proven innocent”.
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo is in Turkey for talks following a meeting with the Saudi king and the crown prince on Tuesday.
In the statement, foreign ministers from the G7 group of leading economies, which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, said: “We, the G7 Foreign Ministers, of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the High Representative of the European Union, affirm our commitment to defending freedom of expression and protection of a free press.
“We remain very troubled by the disappearance of prominent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Those bearing responsibility for his disappearance must be held to account. We encourage Turkish-Saudi collaboration and look forward to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia conducting a thorough, credible, transparent, and prompt investigation, as announced”.
