Washington: "I can't breathe," were the last words uttered by Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was killed by a Saudi hit squad at the country's consulate in Istanbul in October, a CNN report said. An informed source, who has read a translated transcript of an audio recording of the journalist's painful last moments, told CNN on Sunday it was clear that the killing on October 2 was no botched rendition attempt, but the execution of a premeditated plan to murder Khashoggi.

The transcript begins at the moment Khashoggi enters the Saudi consulate in a quiet residential district of Istanbul at lunchtime on October 2. Khashoggi thought he had made a routine appointment to pick up papers that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, but he soon found out that something was wrong when he recognised one of the men who meets him.