“I’m furious about what happened,” said a Saudi in his late 30s. “I hate when Saudi officials get carried away and torture people. We heard many stories during the 1980s and thought it was behind us. And now this.”

“I’m so broken right now,” said another Saudi. “I thought the Turks did it,” he added, referring to claims spread by government supporters on social media that Saudi rivals such as Qatar, Turkey or the Muslim Brotherhood were behind his disappearance.

While some accepted the latest news, several admitted that they did not believe the new narrative.

“Why couldn’t they say where they dumped the body?” said a 24-year-old Saudi woman in Jeddah. “If he did die during a fist fight, finding that out shouldn’t have taken this long.”