Turkish government officials told The Washington Post on Thursday that it has video and audio evidence that they say proves Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Turkey just days ago.
The Turkish government has informed the U.S. of its evidence and has described the contents of recordings to its American peers, according to the officials who spoke to the Post. The video shows that Khashoggi was detained by Saudi officials when he entered the building and the audio recordings reportedly provide gruesome proof of the journalist’s alleged torture and murder.
“You can hear his voice and the voices of men speaking Arabic,” a person with knowledge of the recording told the Post. “You can hear how he was interrogated, tortured and then murdered.”
The Saudi government has denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance and maintains the journalist left the consulate shortly after entering.
Trump has claimed that he wants to get to the bottom of the columnist’s disappearance, but has stopped short of threatening to pull out of the U.S.-Saudi arms agreement, which could rake in hundreds of billions of dollars for the U.S., he said Thursday.