CNN’s Nic Robertson with Updates from Turkey

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, Nic, well, let’s first get to the sort of actual hard evidence that the Turkish president himself spoke publicly about today, that consulate where you’ve been, you know, waiting and watching and reporting for the better part of the last two weeks, has finally been entered by Turkish investigators. As far as you know, what have they found?

NIC ROBERTSON: And I know is, they spent in (INAUDIBLE) last night. Forensic teams as well. One of our cameramen, Cameraman Cameron Stewart, could see blue and purple light flashing out of one of the upstairs window. We understand that the forensic investigators, we were told, had the technology to be able to sort of see if there was DNA in a room that they knew where they want to be going in the building, they knew, they said that Khashoggi had been murdered and precisely where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. Rubble and bricks were removed. They (INAUDIBLE) and a couple of trucks as well. And in the last hour or so, investigators have actually arrived at the consul general’s house to begin what the foreign minister early said was going to be a search of the consul general’s house and some of the vehicles there. Because, of course, some of those vehicles were those seen on close circuit television the moments when Jamal Khashoggi disappeared when Turkish authorities suspect something nefarious happened with him and those vehicles moved off to the consul general’s house.

AMANPOUR: So, Nic, the Turkish authorities have been very leaky and they’ve stuck with the same story, it hasn’t really diverged. And now, more sources are beginning to say there’s no way that this could have been a botched operation. They point to all those 15 Saudis who arrived there the day Jamal went to the consulate, they point to some of the personnel who came, they have identified some of them as crown prince’s bodyguards, they’ve talked about a forensic expert, about bone saw. Does it sound from your sources that the Turks believe this idea of a botched interrogation? Could it be likely or are they trying still to find some kind of face-saving way out of this?

ROBERTSON: You know, I think they’re trying to play this in as much as they would like to pressure Saudi officials behind the scenes. I’ve been told that when they’ve sat with Saudi officials, they’ve said, “Is there anything you’d like to tell us?” But when the Saudi officials stonewall them, then they released information like those 15 names and then the video of these men arriving from Saudi Arabia by these private jets. I don’t think for one second that Turkish authorities are fooled by this apparent statement that might come from Saudi officials that it just doesn’t stand the sniff test. Those private jets flying for Riyadh, we know the routes that they took. But they would have had to have gone through air traffic control, those people from the closer rounds of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman couldn’t have got here without being sanctioned.