ISTANBUL —  Turkey’s public prosecutor said Wednesday that Jamal Khashoggi was strangled and dismembered upon arrival at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this month as part of a premeditated plan to kill the prominent journalist and dispose of his body.

The statement, delivered as Saudi Arabia’s prosecutor left Istanbul for Riyadh, marked the most conclusive official description to date of what happened to the prominent journalist and Washington Post contributing columnist when he entered the diplomatic mission on Oct. 2.

It also intensified pressure on Saudi Arabia — now at the center of a global firestorm — to find its way out of a crisis that has elicited sharp criticism from Western allies and put the spotlight on the Trump administration’s close relationship with the kingdom. 

Irfan Fidan, the Turkish prosecutor, said Khashoggi was “strangled as soon as he entered the consulate” in line with “premeditated plans.”

Khashoggi’s body, “after being strangled, was subsequently destroyed by being dismembered, once again confirming the planning of the murder,” Fidan said.

The Turkish statement used the word “bogulmak,” which can also mean suffocation.

Saudi Arabia's top prosecutor, Saud al-Mojeb, leaves his country's consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2018. (Can Erok/AP)

The statement came shortly after Saudi Arabia’s top prosecutor, Saud al-Mojeb, departed for Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. His three-day visit had been billed as a chance for the two nations to cooperate. But it appeared to have yielded few answers.

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Louisa Loveluck and Kareem Faheem, WaPo this afternoon.