Washington Post demands Saudi Arabia tell the truth about Khashoggi murder in new ad campaign

The Washington Post on Friday launched an online advertisement campaign aimed at pressuring Saudi Arabia into disclosing the truth about what had happened to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The "Demand the Truth" campaign, which is published both online and in print, places Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman alongside the campaign slogan. Prince Mohammed, who is the kingdom's de-facto ruler, has been accused of being behind the order to kill Khashoggi.

"On Tuesday, October 2 Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul and was brutally murdered," the full-page print advertisement reads, accompanied by a prominent image of Prince Mohammed.

The Post has also released a 15-second video featuring the same content.

Pressure has piled on Riyadh since the disappearance of Khashoggi, who was killed during a visited to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. After almost three weeks of denials, Saudi Arabia conceded that the writer was dead, however claimed that he had died in a scuffle.

Karen Attiah, The Washington Post's global opinions editor who worked closely witgh Khashoggi, blasted the initial Saudi claims about a heated fist-fight as "utter bullshit".

On Thursday, Riyadh changed its narrative on what occurred at the Istanbul consulate on the day of Khashoggi's disappearance, admitting that the killing was premeditated. The latest change of story by Riyadh is seen as an attempt to try to ease international outrage over the slaying of a prominent critic of Prince Mohammed.

The shifting explanations indicate Saudi Arabia is scrambling for a way out of the crisis that has enveloped the world's largest oil exporter and a major US ally in the Middle East.

But a solution seems a long way off, partly because of deepening skepticism in Turkey and elsewhere that the brazen crime could have been carried out without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's heir apparent.

The fallout that has followed Khashoggi's death has also seen the United States reluctantly increase pressure on its key Middle Eastern ally. President Donald Trump earlier this week described the affair as "one of the worst cover-ups in the history of cover-ups". 

Turkish officials, meanwhile, have released a steady flow of leaked information to the media since Khashoggi's killing,
including references to purported audio recordings of the killing, and security camera footage of the Saudi officials who were involved as they moved around Istanbul.

Saudi officials told The Associated Press this week that the kingdom sent a team to Turkey that included a forensics expert and a member whose job was to dress in the 59-year-old writer's clothes and pretend to be him - though they were insisting as late as Tuesday that his death was an accident.