*London: *
Saudi operatives suspected of killing the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at thecountry’s Istanbul consulate were heard joking and talking aboutdismemberment before his arrival, according to secret tapes heard by UNinvestigators.
Helena Kennedy, a British lawyer assisting the UN probe into Khashoggi’sdeath, said recordings she had heard from inside the kingdom’s mission inTurkey referred to the Saudi critic as a “sacrificial animal.”
“There was a discussion about ‘will the body and the hips fit into a bagthis way’?”, she told BBC television’s Panorama documentary programmebroadcast on Monday night.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a self-styled moderniser, was fetedby global leaders and business titans before the gruesome murder on October2 last year.
But the global fallout from the killing rendered him a pariah.
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Kennedy said Turkish bugs in the Saudi consulate picked up a forensicpathologist suspected of cutting up Khashoggi’s body as saying, “I oftenplay music when I’m cutting cadavers. Sometimes I have a coffee and a cigarat hand.”
The pathologist also says, “‘It’s the first time in my life that I’ve hadto cut pieces on the ground — even if you are a butcher and want to cut,he hangs the animal up to do so’,” she added.
“They speak about waiting for Khashoggi to arrive and they say, ‘Has thesacrificial animal arrived?’. You could hear them laughing, it’s a chillingbusiness.” -APP/AFP
