9 questions Saudi Arabia has not answered about Khashoggi killing
● Saudi account at odds with other reports, viewed sceptically
Saudi Arabia offered an explanation Saturday for what had happened to journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, 17 days after he went missing at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.
But even though the kingdom finally confirmed that Khashoggi had died inside the consulate, as Turkish officials had alleged, the Saudi account of how that happened conflicts with information from other sources, and key details appear to be missing.
Below are nine questions that the Saudi kingdom still needs to answer.
Was Khashoggi really considering a return to Saudi Arabia?
The Saudi statement said that the “suspects” in Khashoggi’s killing had travelled to Turkey to meet with the journalist as he had suggested he was interesting in returning home. However, Khashoggi had travelled to the consulate with his fiancée, Turkish national Hatice Cengiz, who has said that her partner was seeking a document from the Saudi government that would allow them to wed.
Khashoggi himself had told friends that he was suspicious of attempts to lure him back to the kingdom.
“He said: ‘Are you kidding? I don’t trust them one bit’,” after one such attempt Khaled Saffuri, an Arab-American political activist, recounting to The Washington Post.