The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has arrived in Saudi Arabia for crisis talks with King Salman, as reports emerged that the kingdom was poised to acknowledge that the missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi died inside a diplomatic building in Istanbul.
Pompeo landed in Riyadh on Tuesday morning and met the king immediately to discuss the crisis surrounding Khashoggi, who vanished two weeks ago during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The US’s top diplomat “reiterated US concern over Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance”, according to State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.
He later met the county’s powerful crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and is on Wednesday due to visit Istanbul, where a joint Turkish-Saudi investigation is under way.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Tuesday said police who entered the consulate for the first time on Monday had found some surfaces had been painted over. “My hope is that we can reach conclusions that will give us a reasonable opinion as soon as possible, because the investigation is looking into many things such as toxic materials and those materials being removed by painting them over,” he told reporters.
Khashoggi, a prominent critic of the crown prince, relocated from Saudi Arabia to the US last year, where he wrote for the Washington Post. He visited the Saudi consulate building in Istanbul on 2 October for an appointment to pick up documents for his forthcoming marriage and has not been seen since.
Turkish officials allege they have video and audio evidence that proves Khashoggi was interrogated and murdered by a 15-man hit squad sent from Riyadh – claims Saudi Arabia continues to deny, although it has offered no alternative version of events.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
