Turkey to search Saudi consulate

Istanbul - Turkey said Tuesday it will search the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul as part of an investigation into the disappearance of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a week after he vanished during a visit there.

The announcement came as the Washington Post, for which Khashoggi was a columnist, published a surveillance image of the journalist walking into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, just before he disappeared. Turkish officials have said they fear the columnist was killed inside the premises. But Saudi Arabia has called the allegations that it killed 59-year-old Khashoggi “baseless”.

Tuesday’s statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, Hami Aksoy, said Saudi authorities have notified Ankara that they were “open to cooperation” and would allow the consulate building to be searched. The ministry did not say when the premises would be searched.

The surveillance image released by the Post bore a date and time stamp, as well as a Turkish caption bearing Khashoggi’s name and that he was arriving to the consulate. The Post said “a person close to the investigation” shared the image with them, without elaborating.

The door Khashoggi walked in through appeared to be the main entrance of the consulate in Istanbul’s 4th Levent neighborhood, a leafy, upscale district near the city’s financial hub that’s home to several other consulates. President Donald Trump said he had concerns. “I don’t like hearing about it. And hopefully that will sort itself out,” Trump said. “Right now, nobody knows anything about it, but there are some pretty bad stories going around. I do not like it.”