Turkey says it has more evidence to share of Khashoggi killing

ISTANBUL – Turkey still has "certain evidence" in relation to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi that it has not released to the public and it will do so once the investigation is finalized, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday.

Some of the evidence has been shared with Saudi authorities and other countries that wanted to examine it, the foreign minister said during a trip to Japan, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

"After this investigation is finalized and we are certain, then we will continue to share the evidence with the public," he said. CIA Director Gina Haspel listened to audio purportedly capturing the interrogation and killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi during her visit to Turkey last month, according to people familiar with her meetings.

Mevlut said it is Saudi Arabia's responsibility to find out what has happened to Khashoggi's body, as the 15-member hit team suspected of killing him is inside the country.

"These 15 people who came to Turkey did not come on their own," he said. "They were given orders."

He reiterated that Turkey does not believe that King Salman is the one who ordered the killing, saying Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke to him twice on the phone and does not believe that he is "the type of person who would issue a death order."

In an opinion piece in The Washington Post last week, Erdogan said the order to kill Khashoggi "came from the highest levels of the Saudi government" but that he did not "believe for a second" that King Salman ordered the hit.

In an interview with CNN on Monday, Khashoggi's 35-year-old son Salah said the king had assured him that "everybody involved will be brought to justice" for the killing.

"I have faith in that. This will happen," he said. Alongside his brother Abdullah, 33, he made an appeal for the return of his father's body.

"We just need to make sure that he rests in peace," he said.

Turkey has said that a 15-man kill team dispatched from Saudi Arabia killed Khashoggi shortly after he entered the consulate to seek a document he needed for his planned marriage to his Turkish fiancee. They then dismembered his body and disposed of it in what was a chilling pre-meditated plot, Turkish authorities said.

After initially insisting that Khashoggi had left the consulate shortly after he had entered, Saudi Arabia last month admitted that he was killed inside. However, it has repeatedly denied that Saudi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for the murder, despite the fact that the suspects in the killing include his close associates.

Turkey has repeatedly accused Saudi Arabia of not cooperating in the investigation and destroying evidence. On Monday, a Turkish official said that at least two members of a team that Saudi Arabia sent to investigate Khashoggi's killing were actually there to cover it up.

The Washington Post's Zeynep Karatas contributed to this report.