The order to murder Saudi journalist and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi came from "the highest levels" of the Riyadh government, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday in a Washington Post op-ed.
"We know that the perpetrators are among the 18 suspects detained in Saudi Arabia. We also know that those individuals came to carry out their orders: Kill Khashoggi and leave," he wrote.
"Finally, we know that the order to kill Khashoggi came from the highest levels of the Saudi government."
Erdogan added that he did "not believe for a second" that Saudi's King Salman had ordered the hit on Khashoggi, who was murdered at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
Body dissolved in acid
Turkey's chief prosecutor on Wednesday confirmed for the first time that Khashoggi was strangled as soon as he entered the consulate on October 2 as part of a planned hit, and his body was then dismembered and destroyed.
"We now see that it wasn't just cut up, they got rid of the body by dissolving it," Yasin Aktay, an official in Turkey's ruling party, told the Hurriyet newspaper on Friday.
The claim echoed what a Turkish official had earlier told the Washington Post - for which Khashoggi was a contributor - that authorities are investigating a theory the body was destroyed in acid.
"According to the latest information we have, the reason they cut up the body is it was easier to dissolve it," said Aktay, an advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who was close to Khashoggi.
"They aimed to ensure no sign of the body was left."
