Saudi Arabia government acknowledged early Saturday that journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Saudi journalist Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom’s leadership and a Washington Post contributor, was last seen on October 2 entering his country’s consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
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The announcement, which came in a tweet from the Saudi foreign ministry, said that an initial investigation by the government’s general prosecutor found that Khashoggi been in discussions with people inside the consulate when a quarrel broke out, escalating to a fatal fistfight.
#STATEMENT | On the case of the disappearance of the Saudi citizen Jamal bin Ahmed Khashoggi pic.twitter.com/RmgOwtYdNW
— Foreign Ministry 🇸🇦 (@KSAmofaEN) October 19, 2018
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“The discussions between Jamal Khashoggi and those he met at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul… devolved into a fistfight, leading to his death,” the Saudi Press Agency said, citing the public prosecutor.
The kingdom announced that 18 people had been arrested in the ongoing probe.
The Saudi king also ordered the setting up of the ministerial committee under the chairmanship of the crown prince to restructure the kingdom’s intelligence agency and “define its powers accurately”, state media said.
Shortly before Riyadh confirmed that Khashoggi had been killed, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi King Salman agreed in telephone talks to continue cooperation in the investigation into the Khashoggi affair.
His disappearance had been a mystery and triggered an international crisis, with Turkish officials accusing Saudi Arabia of a state-sponsored killing.