26 October 2018•Update: 26 October 2018
By Sena Guler
ANKARA
Three weeks after the disappearance in Istanbul of Jamal Khashoggi, and a week after Saudi officials admitted he had been killed at their consulate, Turkey’s president is asking where the journalist’s body ended up.
“It is obvious that he [Khashoggi] was killed but where, you have to show the body,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in the Turkish capital Ankara, addressing a group of ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party provincial heads.
The killer is already known to Saudi Arabia, among 18 arrested by Saudi officials last Friday, added the president.
“The 18 people know who killed him, because the culprit is among them,” said Erdogan, adding that Turkey has additional information and documents.
Saudi-born Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, went missing after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
After weeks of denying any knowledge of his whereabouts, Saudi officials last week admitted that Khashoggi was killed in a "brawl" at the consulate.
Earlier this week, press accounts quoted a Saudi official as saying the body had been given to a “local cooperator” to take care of, but no Saudi official has addressed the body’s whereabouts on record.
Erdogan also said that Saudi Arabia will send a chief prosecutor to Turkey on Sunday to meet his counterpart in Istanbul.
He also said Turkey was sharing its information and documents on the Khashoggi case with interested relevant parties, and shared them with Saudi Arabia as well.
He also asked the kingdom to hand over those arrested to Turkey in order to be tried in the country, where the incident occurred.
