11/15/18

This weekend, Turkey's president said for the first time that he had given audiotapes of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi to officials in a number of Western countries, including the U. S.

Khashoggi was killed last month inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Turkish president's comment on Saturday keeps the pressure on the Trump administration

to make Saudi Arabia face consequences for Khashoggi's death. NPR's Jackie Northam has been following the case and joins us now. Hey, Jackie.

Hi, Ailsa. So Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has hinted for a while now that there was this audio recording of Khashoggi's killing.

Now he's publicly confirmed it. Do you think these audiotapes will impact the global response to what happened to Khashoggi? Well, you know, this tape is expected to be extremely disturbing with sounds of the final moments of Jamal Khashoggi's life.

Turkish officials say he was strangled and then dismembered by a 15-man hit team from Saudi Arabia, so it was probably pretty gruesome.

The Washington Post has reported CIA director Gina Haspel listened to the audio while she was on a trip to Istanbul last month, but the administration hasn't confirmed that.

In fact, Ailsa, the only country that has confirmed it's listened to the audiotapes is Canada. Here is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Paris this weekend.

Canada's intelligence agencies have been working very closely on this issue with the Turkish intelligence. Canada has been fully briefed up on what Turkey had to share.

So, Ailsa, the audiotape is out there. Yeah. Are there any plans to make the tapes more broadly public?