Saudi \'kill team\'s\' luggage contained syringes\, scissors: report

Saudi 'kill team's' luggage contained syringes, scissors: report

AFP  |  Istanbul 

Luggage carried by a 15-member Saudi team dispatched to included scissors, defibrillators and syringes that may have been used against Khashoggi, who was murdered in the Saudi consulate, a pro-government Turkish daily said Tuesday.

Turkish media has published gruesome details of the murder of 59-year-old who according to a Turkish was strangled and dismembered soon after he entered the consulate on October 2 to obtain paperwork for his marriage to his Turkish fiancee.

After repeated denials, finally admitted Khashoggi, a and critic, had been murdered at the mission in a "rogue" operation.

Turkish has said the 15-member Saudi team travelled from to to kill

The luggage carried by the team was loaded into two planes that left for at 1520 GMT and 1946 GMT on October 2, newspaper said.

The luggage contained 10 phones, five walkie-talkies, intercoms, two syringes, two defibrillators, a jamming device, staplers, and scissors, the paper reported.

The team was being led by Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, the man named by Turkish media as the of the operation against

The New York Times, quoting sources familiar with a recording of Khashoggi's killing, reported Monday that Mutreb - a who frequently travelled with Mohammed - picked up a phone at the consulate to say "tell your boss" that the operation was accomplished.

officers have told US officials they believe Mutreb was speaking to one of the prince's aides, it reported.

And officials believe "your boss" was a reference to Mohammed.

Erdogan has said the order to murder Khashoggi came from "the highest levels" of the and he pointedly failed to absolve Salman of responsibility.

has shared voice recordings linked to the murder with a number of countries including as well as the and its Western allies.

But Turkish officials say they played them the recordings but did not hand them over.

"We played the voice recording linked to the murder with anyone who wanted," Erdogan told Turkish journalists aboard a plane returning from where he attended commemorations at the weekend marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

"The recording is really disastrous," he said in quotes published by

"When the agent listened, he was shocked and said this could only be done by someone who got heroin." Khashoggi's body has never been found, but Sabah reported on Saturday that his killers poured his remains down the drain after dissolving them in acid.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Tue, November 13 2018. 17:35 IST