There were 15 of them. Most arrived in the dead of night, laid their trap and waited for the target to arrive. That target was Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi critic of his country’s government and its young crown prince. Since his killing in Istanbul, Turkish media has released a steady drip feed of evidence implicating Saudi officials. Weeks of investigation by The Times builds on that evidence and reconstructs what unfolded, hour-by-hour. Our timeline shows the ruthless efficiency of a hit team of experts that seemed specially chosen from Saudi government ministries. Some had links to the crown prince himself. After a series of shifting explanations, Saudi Arabia now denies that this brazen hit job was premeditated. But this reconstruction of the killing, and the botched cover-up, calls their story into serious question. It’s Friday morning, Sept. 28. Khashoggi and his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, are at the local marriage office in Istanbul. In order to marry, he’s told that he needs Saudi paperwork and goes straight to the consulate to arrange it. They tell him to return in a week. It all seems routine, but it’s not. Inside there’s a Saudi spy, Ahmed al-Muzaini, who’s working under diplomatic cover. That very day, he flies off to Riyadh and helps concoct a plan to intercept Khashoggi when he returns to the consulate. Fast-forward to Monday night into Tuesday morning. Saudi agents converge in Istanbul aboard separate flights. Muzaini, the spy, flies back from Riyadh. A commercial flight carries a three-man team that we believe flew from Cairo. Two of the men are security officers and they’ve previously traveled with the crown prince. A private jet flying from Riyadh lands around 3:30 a.m. That plane is often used by the Saudi government, and it’s carrying nine Saudi officials, some who played key roles in Khashoggi’s death. We’ll get to Team 3 later on, and for now focus on these men from Team 2. This is Salah al-Tubaigy, a high-ranking forensics and autopsy expert in the Saudi interior ministry. Turkish officials will later say his role was to dismember Khashoggi’s body. Another is Mustafa al-Madani, a 57-year-old engineer. As we’ll see, it’s no accident that he looks like Khashoggi. And this is Maher Mutreb, the leader of the operation. Our investigation into his past reveals a direct link between Mutreb and the Saudi crown prince. When bin Salman toured a Houston neighborhood earlier this year, we discovered that Mutreb was with him, a glowering figure in the background. We found him again in Boston, at a U.N. meeting in New York, in Madrid and Paris, too. This global tour was all part of a charm offensive by the prince to paint himself as a moderate reformer. Back then, Mutreb was in the royal guard. Now, he would orchestrate Khashoggi’s killing. And his close ties to the crown prince beg the question, just how high up the Saudi chain of command did the plot to kill go? Early Tuesday morning, Khashoggi flies back from a weekend trip to London. He and the Saudis nearly cross paths at the airport. The Saudi teams check into two hotels, which give quick access to the consulate. Khashoggi heads home with his fiancée. He’d just bought an apartment for their new life together. By mid-morning, the Saudis are on the move. Mutreb leaves his hotel three hours before Khashoggi is due at the consulate. The rest of the team isn’t far behind. The building is only a few minutes away on foot, and soon, they’re spotted at this entrance. Mutreb arrives first. Next, we see al-Tubaigy, the autopsy expert. And now al-Madani, the lookalike. The stage is almost set. A diplomatic car pulls out of the consulate driveway and switches places with a van, which backs in. Turkish officials say this van would eventually carry away Khashoggi’s remains. From above, we can see the driveway is covered, hiding any activity around the van from public view. Meanwhile, Khashoggi and his fiancée set out for the consulate, walking hand-in-hand. In their final hour together, they chat about dinner plans and new furniture for their home. At 1:13 p.m., they arrive at the consulate. Khashoggi gives her his cellphones before he enters. He walks into the consulate. It’s the last time we see him. Inside, Khashoggi is brought to the consul general’s office on the second floor. The hit team is waiting in a nearby room. Sources briefed on the evidence, told us Khashoggi quickly comes under attack. He’s dragged to another room and is killed within minutes. Then al-Tubaigy, the autopsy expert, dismembers his body while listening to music. Maher Mutreb makes a phone call to a superior. He says, “Tell your boss,” and “The deed was done.” Outside, the van reportedly carrying Khashoggi’s body pulls out of the side entrance and drives away. At the same time, the Saudis begin trying to cover their tracks. While Khashoggi’s fiancée waits here where she left him, two figures leave from the opposite side. One of them is wearing his clothes. Later, the Saudis would claim that this was Khashoggi. But it’s al-Madani, the engineer, now a body double pretending that the missing journalist left the consulate alive. Yet there’s one glaring flaw: The clothes are the same, but he’s wearing his own sneakers, the ones he walked in with. Meanwhile, the van that’s allegedly carrying Khashoggi’s body makes the two-minute drive from the consulate to the Saudi consul’s residence. There’s several minutes of deliberations but the van eventually pulls into the building’s driveway. Again, it’s hidden from public view. It’s now three hours since Khashoggi was last seen. The body double hails this taxi and continues weaving a false trail through the city. He heads to a popular tourist area and then changes back into his own clothes. Later, we see him joking around in surveillance footage. Over at the airport, more Saudi officials arrive on another flight from Riyadh. They spend just five hours in Istanbul, but we’re not sure where they go. Now we pick up Maher Mutreb again, exiting from the consul’s house. It’s time for them to go. Mutreb and others check out of their hotel and move through airport security. Al-Muzaini, the spy, heads to the airport too. But as they’re leaving Istanbul, Khashoggi’s fiancée is still outside the consulate, pacing in circles. She’ll soon raise the alarm that Khashoggi is missing and she’ll wait for him until midnight. The alarm spreads around the world. Nine days later, the Saudis send another team to Istanbul. They say it’s to investigate what happened. But among them are a toxicologist and a chemist, who also has ties to the hit team. He and Tubaigy attended a forensics graduation days before Khashoggi was killed. Turkish officials later say that this team’s mission was not to investigate, but to cover up the killing. Now the Saudi story has changed, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for several suspects in Khashoggi’s killing. But that doesn’t include Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who many Western government officials are convinced authorized the killing. Khashoggi’s remains still haven’t been found.<doc-sep>That relationship is already strained over several issues, including Turkey's support for Qatar in the blockade by Saudi Arabia; its closeness to the Muslim Brotherhood - blacklisted by Riyadh as a terrorist organisation; and its rapprochement with Saudi Arabia's arch-rival Iran. But if proven, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi would be the most serious diplomatic crisis between the two in living memory.<doc-sep>Turkish government officials have concluded that Saudi agents killed missing Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate and dismembered his body with a bone saw, The New York Times reported late Tuesday. The Times report, which cited a senior official in the Ankara government, said Turkish authorities believe Khashoggi was murdered on orders from "the highest levels of the royal court" in Riyadh. The official compared the operation to the 1993 movie "Pulp Fiction." Khashoggi, 59, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate through the main entrance on Oct. 2. Saudi officials insisted he left the building through another exit, but have not provided public evidence to prove it. Turkish officials have not stated how they determined that Khashoggi was killed at the consulate. Turkey has said it will search the consulate for signs of what happened to Khashoggi, but has not said when it will do so. The Post, citing two people with knowledge of the investigation, reported Tuesday that a 15-member team of men who had arrived from Saudi Arabia was waiting for Khashoggi to arrive at the consulate. Later that same day, the men reportedly left Istanbul on flights bound for Cairo and Dubai. Khashoggi had gone to the consulate in Istanbul for paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancée. He had been living in the United States since last year, in self-imposed exile, in part due to the rise of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has shown little tolerance for criticism. As a contributor to the Post, Khashoggi has written extensively about Saudi Arabia, including criticism of its war in Yemen, its recent diplomatic spat with Canada and its arrest of women's rights activists after the lifting of a ban on women driving. Those policies all have been seen as initiatives of the crown prince, who also has presided over a roundup of activists and businessmen. In an op-ed published by the Post late Tuesday, Khashoggi's fiancée wrote that the Oct. 2 visit to the Saudi consulate was Khashoggi's second in the space of a few days. She said he had been "somewhat concerned that he could be in danger" when making his first visit Sept. 28 but had been encouraged by a "positive" first meeting with consular staff. WASHINGTON POST DEMANDS ANSWERS ON MISSING JOURNALIST "He walked into the consulate of Saudi Arabia, his native country, without doubting he would be safe there," wrote Hatice Cengiz, who added that she became concerned when he did not return from the consulate after three hours. Cengiz called on President Trump and first lady Melania Trump to "help shed light" on Khashoggi's disappearance. She also asked the Saudi government to release closed-circuit TV footage from inside the consulate to shed light on what happened to her fiancé. I don’t know how I can keep living if he was abducted or killed in Turkey," Cengiz wrote. "Although my hope slowly fades away each passing day, I remain confident that Jamal is still alive." Earlier Tuesday, Post CEO and Publisher Fred Ryan called on both Riyadh and Ankara to release more information about Khashoggi's whereabouts, saying: "Silence, denials and delays are not acceptable." The Associated Press contributed to this report.<doc-sep>
ISTANBUL—Police in Istanbul have concluded a missing Saudi dissident journalist was killed in his country’s consulate in the city and his body possibly removed from the building in pieces, two Turkish officials briefed on the case said. Saudi authorities on Sunday dismissed the allegations as “baseless.” Riyadh has said the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, a fierce critic of the Saudi government, left the consulate shortly after entering it on Tuesday. The escalating dispute over Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance could further inflame relations between the rival powers, which are competing for influence in the Muslim world. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday he was following developments and waiting to hear Turkish prosecutors’ investigative findings, saying: “We will share with the world whatever results come out.” An adviser to Mr. Erdogan, Yasin Aktay, told Turkish television it was clear Mr. Khashoggi didn’t exit the consulate in a “normal way.” Mr. Khashoggi, 59, went to the consulate at around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, according to Turkish authorities and his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who accompanied him to the entrance of the building. Ms. Cengiz said Mr. Khashoggi had still not left the consulate when it closed for the day and she alerted Mr. Aktay, the Erdogan adviser. Vanished Jamal Khashoggi goes missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul Sep. 11: Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi arrives in Istanbul from Washington, D.C. Sep. 28: Mr. Khashoggi goes to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to request paperwork related to his divorce. Unable to obtain the documents immediately, he flies off to London. Sep. 29: Mr. Khashoggi gives a speech on the Saudi dimension to the Palestinian question at a conference in London. Oct. 1: Mr. Khashoggi returns to Istanbul from London. He posts a message on his Twitter account that appears as the last to date. Oct. 2: At around 1 p.m., Mr. Khashoggi walks into the Saudi consulate after handing his cellphones to his fiancée. Worried that he hasn’t come out when the consulate closes, she alerts Turkish authorities. Oct. 3: Saudi authorities say Mr. Khashoggi left the building after collecting his papers. Turkish authorities say they believe he is still inside. Oct. 6: Turkish officials say police have concluded he was killed inside the consulate. Saudi authorities say the accusations are “baseless.” One of the Turkish officials, who declined to be named, said police would release evidence to support their assessment that Mr. Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate building in Istanbul’s Levent business district. “We’re not sure how that happened, but we believe Mr. Khashoggi’s body didn’t leave the consulate” intact, the official said. The Saudi consulate said Saudi investigators had arrived in Istanbul over the weekend to assist in the probe. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and his powerful son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have pushed to liberalize their ultraconservative country while also overseeing a crackdown on dissidents with hundreds of arrests. Mr. Khashoggi, once regarded as close to the Saudi establishment, applauded new social reforms—such as the decision to allow women to drive—but spoke out about what he said was a shrinking space for free speech. Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée Hatice Cengiz, left, and her friends wait in front of the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on Wednesday. Photo: ozan kose/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Fearing he would be arrested or banned from traveling, Mr. Khashoggi left his home country last year and moved to Washington, D.C. “Every time I hear about another arrest or about a friend who is travel banned, I am grateful I am here,” he told The Wall Street Journal in May. The allegations surrounding Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance come against a backdrop of tense relations between Ankara and Riyadh, which have worsened since Mr. Erdogan backed Qatar in a dispute with Saudi Arabia last year. Turkey and Saudi Arabia also differ over Ankara’s sympathetic view of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that Saudi Arabia and its allies consider a terrorist organization. In Saudi Arabia, Mr. Khashoggi’s criticism of the monarchy put a strain on his personal life, alienating him from his family members, many of whom remained in Saudi Arabia. He and his Saudi wife soon agreed to divorce. He met his Turkish fiancée, Ms. Cengiz, a Ph.D. student, at a conference in Turkey in the spring. A few months later the pair agreed to marry and Mr. Khashoggi bought an apartment in Istanbul. Despite the tension, Mr. Khashoggi retained some contacts with Saudi authorities. In recent months, he visited the Saudi embassy in Washington on several occasions.