By Tamer El-Ghobashy (c) 2018, The Washington Post · Oct 25, 2018 -  -ISTANBUL - Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor said on Thursday that Jamal Khashoggi was killed in a planned operation, based on information it received from Turkish investigators in Istanbul, according to a statement from the kingdom’s Foreign Ministry.   

The Foreign Ministry did not say what led the prosecutor to draw that conclusion, only that it was based on information shared by Turkish investigators working with Saudi officials in Turkey.   

According to the statement, a joint Saudi-Turkish investigative team in Istanbul “indicates that the suspects in the incident had committed their act with a premeditated intention.”   

Still, neither Trump nor Saudi Arabia have been willing to implicate Saudi leadership in the journalist’s killing. American intelligence officials and lawmakers have said that an operation targeting a critic of the royal court in a foreign country is unlikely to have been ordered without the knowledge of senior Saudi officials. 

 
 Last week Saudi Arabia said it had arrested 18 people and dismissed five officials.