A Turkish presidential adviser says that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s body was “dissolved” after his death “to leave no trace behind,” Bloomberg reports.
Although Saudi Arabia initially said that Khashoggi left the consulate in Istanbul the same day he entered one month ago, the government latter admitted that he had been killed by Saudi agents. His body was never recovered. An unnamed senior Turkish official told the Washington Post that “Khashoggi’s body was not in need of burying.”
"The reason they dismembered Khashoggi's body was to dissolve his remains more easily", presidential adviser Yasin Aktay told the Hurriyet Daily News on Thursday, according to the BBC. "Now we see that they did not only dismember his body but also vaporized it."
“Their aim was to leave no trace of the body,” he added, according to Bloomberg. Aktay said this was the “only logical conclusion,” though no forensic evidence can conclude that Khashoggi’s body was dissolved.