According to Reuters, the Turkish authorities have announced the arrest of two men believed to be intelligence officers for the United Arab Emirates; the two have already confessed to having recruited local informants.
The news agency said Turkish counterintelligence officials suspect that at least one of the suspects may be involved in a spying operation linked to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist killed last October inside the consulate of the ' Saudi Arabia in Istanbul by a member of the team of Saudi intelligence agents.
On Friday, Reuters, citing an unnamed source, said both men are Emirati citizens and that one of them arrived in Turkey just days after Khashoggi's murder. Monitored by Turkish counterintelligence for a period of six months it would lead investigators to the second man. The latter is believed to have traveled to Turkey to "help his colleague with the workload," Reuters said.
The Turkish state news agency, TRT Haber, published photos of the two men in custody, but did not provide their names. He also published secret surveillance photographs of the two men, allegedly taken by Turkish counter-intelligence. A source told Reuters that Turkish counterintelligence officials had entered an Istanbul apartment used by the two men as a safe house, where they found an encrypted computer "in a hidden compartment".
According to the source, the two citizens of the United Arab Emirates were interrogated for several hours during which they confessed to being employees of the United Arab Emirates intelligence service. They would also admit to recruiting local residents as informants. Their activities and objectives were consistent with intelligence operations targeting exiled Arab citizens and students living in Turkey.
The anonymous Turkish official also reported that the authorities had accumulated "extensive evidence" of "secret activities carried out on Turkish territory" by the two men, and described the case against them as "hermetic".
However, when contacted by Reuters, Turkey's Interior Ministry declined to comment on the arrests. A spokesman for the Istanbul Police Department confirmed that a police operation was underway against the two Emirati citizens. Turkish media reports on Saturday said the two men had appeared before a court in Istanbul and had been held in custody on charges of spying against the Turkish state.