By Eric King
The secret tapes that reveal the moments leading up to the brutal murder of former Saudi journalist Khashoggi was played on the BBC as part of a panorama documentary.
In moving footage watched by millions on BBC’s panorama, British Barrister Helena Kennedy and UN special rapporteur Agnes Callamard describe the horror of hearing the premeditated plans of Khashoggi’s killers.
As Khashoggi and his fiancée were walking to the consulate, a call between two of the hit squad, Mutreb and forensic pathologist, Dr al-Tubaigy reveals a cruel conversation in which the pathologist jokes of listening to music when he is cutting corpses.
“He talks about how when he’s doing autopsies. You can hear them laughing,” Kennedy says.
“He says, ‘I often play music when I’m cutting cadavers(corpses)And sometimes I have a coffee and a cigar at hand.'”
“There was a point where you can hear Khashoggi moving from being a man who’s a confident person, towards a sense of fear – rising anxiety, rising terror – and then knowing that something fatal is about to happen,” says Kennedy.
She continues: “There’s something absolutely horrifying about the voice changing. The cruelty of it comes across by listening to the tapes.” Callamard say he is asking:
”Are you going to give me an injection?’ to which he’s being told ‘Yes’.”
Kennedy says she heard Khashoggi asking twice whether he is being kidnapped and then saying, ‘How could this happen in an embassy?'”
“The sounds that are heard after that point will tend to indicate that he’s suffocated. Probably with a plastic bag over his head,” says Callamard. “His mouth was also closed – violently – maybe with a hand or something else.”
“You hear a voice saying, ‘Let him cut,’ and it sounds like Mutreb.
“Then somebody shouting, ‘It’s over,’ and someone else shouting, ‘Take it off, take it off. Put this on his head. Wrap it.’ I can only assume that they had removed his head.” Kennedy heard a low level humming sound which Turkish intelligence officials believe this was the sound of the saw.
INDEFINITE WAIT
Khashoggi’s fiancée Hatiz Cengiz painfully recalls an indefinite wait for her future husband whom she would never see again.
“I waited and waited and waited there past 15:30. Then, when I realised the consulate had closed, I started running towards it. I asked why Jamal didn’t come out. A guard told me he didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Cengiz was desperate and phoned an old friend of Khashoggi’s. He had given her the number in case he was ever in trouble.Dr Yasin Aktay is a member of Turkey’s ruling party with contacts at the highest levels. Aktay said:
“I received a call from an unknown number, a really worried voice from a lady I didn’t know,” he says. “She said, ‘My fiance Jamal Khashoggi went into the Saudi consulate and didn’t come out.'”
Yasin called the head of Turkish intelligence and alerted the office of President Tayyip Erdogan. And within 24 hours of their arrival, the hit squad were on their way back to Saudi Arabia. Four days after the murder, a separate Saudi team arrived, pretending to be there to investigate what happened. Turkish investigators were not allowed in for 2 weeks, allowing enough time for a complete cleaning.
“By the time they were able to collect some evidence, there was nothing there, not even DNA evidence of Mr Khashoggi having been there,” says Callamard.
“The only logical conclusion is that the place was thoroughly, forensically cleaned.”For weeks, despite mounting pressure from the Turks, the Saudis denied the murder at first saying there had been “a fist fight” in the consulate and then claiming it was “a rogue operation”.
The Turkish authorities from the CIA and a few handpicked intelligence agencies, including MI6, to listen to the tapes, proving Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi state operatives.
The CIA reportedly came to the conclusion there was “medium to high certainty” that Mohammad bin Salman had ordered the killing. They briefed Congressmen who were left in no doubt about the finding.
TRIAL
In January, the Saudi government finally put 11 people on trial in Riyadh for the murder of Khashoggi, including Mutreb and Dr al-Tubaigy, but not the alleged mastermind – Saud al-Qahtani.
He has not been indicted or even summoned to court to give evidence. I have been told he is being kept in seclusion away from everyone, including his own family, but is still in contact with the crown prince.