Jamal Khashoggi died as a result of a brutal premeditated murder, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday, in a highly anticipated speech in which he soundly rejected Saudi Arabia's claim that the journalist was killed accidentally.
Turkish investigators wearing hazmat suits searched the Saudi consul general's residence in Istanbul on Wednesday, looking for clues to what happened to Jamal Khashoggi amid growing indications that the men allegedly responsible for the journalist's death have close ties to the highest levels of the Saudi government.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saudi Arabia's top leaders on Tuesday "strongly denied" any knowledge of what happened to missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
President Donald Trump suggested Monday that "rogue killers" could be behind the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, after a phone call with Saudi Arabia's King Salman about the case.
Missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi may have recorded his own death, a Turkish newspaper reported Saturday morning.
The US has intercepts of Saudi officials discussing a plan to lure journalist Jamal Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia and detain him, according to a US official familiar with the intelligence.
A little over a week ago, a prominent Saudi journalist walked into the consulate general in Istanbul, intending to get paperwork that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancée. She hasn't seen him since.
American officials on Wednesday sharply escalated their public demands on the government of Saudi Arabia to reveal more of what it knows about the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, even as they stopped short of assigning blame to Riyadh for his murder.
