Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor has said he is seeking the death penalty for five suspects charged with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Saud al Mojeb said in a statement that there are 21 people now in custody, with 11 indicted and referred to trial.
Shaalan al Shaalan, his spokesman, said that the highest-level official behind the killing is Saudi former deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al Assiri – who has been fired for ordering the journalist’s return.
He said that Mr Khashoggi’s killers had set in motion plans for the murder on 29 September, three days before he was killed inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.
Mr Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Saudi policy, was killed on 2 October by lethal injection dose.
His body was dismembered and taken out of the building, Mr al Shaalan told the news conference in Riyadh.
He said Mr Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was murdered after “negotiations” for his return to the kingdom failed and that the person who ordered the killing was in fact the head of the negotiating team.
The whereabouts of Mr Khashoggi’s body remain unknown, he said.
Mr al Mojeb appeared to distance the killers and their operation from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and has accused two senior officials of giving the orders.
Mr al Shaalan denied Prince Mohammed had any knowledge of the killing in response to a journalist’s question.
The brutal death of Mr Khashoggi, which has shocked the world, led many analysts and officials to believe it could not have been carried out without the prince’s knowledge.
Mr al Shaalan said that a former adviser to the royal court, Saud al Qahtani, had been due to meet the team that was ordered to send back the journalist, who was killed after efforts to negotiate his return failed.
He added that al Qahtani had been banned from travelling and remained under investigation.
In response, Turkey deemed the Saudi prosecutor’s statements on Mr Khashoggi’s murder as “unsatisfactory”.
Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the measures announced by Mr al Mojeb were “positive but insufficient,” insisting that the suspects should be tried in Turkey.
Mr Cavusoglu said: “I want to say that we did not find some of his explanations to be satisfactory,” adding that “those who gave the order, the real perpetrators need to be revealed. This process cannot be closed down in this way.”
The minister also questioned why Saudi Arabia indicted only 11 out of 18 detained suspects and said the Saudi prosecutor’s announcement did not reveal where Mr Khashoggi’s remains were taken.
Turkey has said the assassination squad was sent from Riyadh for the writer and insists the orders for the killing came from the highest levels of the Saudi government, but not King Salman.