London: Saudi operatives suspected of killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the country's Istanbul consulate were heard joking and talking about dismemberment before his arrival, according to secret tapes heard by UN investigators. Helena Kennedy, a British lawyer assisting the UN probe into Khashoggi's death, said recordings she had heard from inside the kingdom's mission in Turkey referred to the Saudi critic as a "sacrificial animal."

"There was a discussion about 'will the body and the hips fit into a bag this way'?", she told BBC television's Panorama documentary programme broadcast on Monday night. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a self-styled moderniser, was feted by global leaders and business titans before the gruesome murder on October 2 last year. But the global fallout from the killing rendered him a pariah. Kennedy said Turkish bugs in the Saudi consulate picked up a forensic pathologist suspected of cutting up Khashoggi's body as saying, "I often play music when I'm cutting cadavers. Sometimes I have a coffee and a cigar at hand."