A/HRC/41/CRP.1 301. The Special Rapporteur was not able to ascertain with certainty the exact date and time when the Saudi Chief Prosecutor was informed about Turkish conclusions regarding the cause, manner, place, and time of death. 302. The Turkish investigation was limited in three different ways. First, their access to the main crime scene, mainly the Consulate, was wholly inadequate. Second, the Turkish investigators did not search the Consul Residence, even though they could have done so under the terms of the VCCR. Thirdly, they did not interview the Consul himself and other Saudi members of the Consulate who left Turkey on or after 6 October. Access to the Crime Scene 303. As highlighted, Saudi Arabia authorities granted woefully inadequate time and access to Turkish investigators to conduct a professional and effective crime-scene examination and search. Crime-scene protection and meticulous examination are key to every criminal investigation the world over, especially when it comes to the most serious crimes. Every minute that passes between the commission of a crime and the examination of the crime scene is a diminished opportunity to discover crucial evidence. Every minute that passes without protecting the integrity of the crime scene makes the collection of evidence more problematic with adverse consequences as to its admissibility. Mr. Khashoggi was murdered on the 2nd of October. However, Turkish investigators, accompanied by Saudi investigators, only had access to the Consulate on the 15th October and to the Consulate residence on 17th October. 304. In spite of these efforts, given sufficient time, skilled and well-equipped crime-scene investigators would still expect to find ‘trace-evidence’ of the commission of a murder such as that of Mr. Khashoggi. However, premises the size of the Consulate and the residence would take many days to examine thoroughly, especially if ‘clean-ups’ had taken place. Delayed and limited access imposed by the authorities of Saudi Arabia to the criminal forensic investigation severely limited its potential to produce telling evidence. 305. In the Consulate residence (not protected by the VCCR), the Turkish investigators were prevented by Saudi officials from draining a well, even though it is difficult to understand in which ways this could have impacted on the ability of Saudi Arabia to perform its consular functions. They were told that the CCTV recordings of the Consulate and residence were out of order. Could the investigation into the killing of Mr. Khashoggi constitute an exception to the inviolability of the Consulate? 306. Turkey could have considered entering the premises on the ground that the disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi first, later confirmed to be a murder, constituted a “disaster” under Article 31 (2), justifying Turkey’s entry into the Consulate. 307. In his analysis of Turkey’s duty to protect Mr. Khashoggi’s life, human rights academic Marco Milanovic concludes that “entry by Turkish authorities into the consulate during the attack on Khashoggi would arguably not have violated Article 31 VCCR, either because of the assumed consent exception in Article 31(2) or because of an implicit exception for entry without consent justified by the urgent need to protect human life.259” Milanovic bases his arguments on a careful review of the VCCR scholarship and jurisprudence, including the various interpretations made of the “fire and disaster” clause. 308. He further suggests that even if Turkey had breached the inviolability of the consulate under the VCCR, “that wrongfulness would have been precluded by distress,” under the rule codified in Article 24(1) Articles on State Responsibility: ‘[t]he wrongfulness of an act of a State not in conformity with an international obligation of that State is precluded if the author of the act in question has no other reasonable way, in a situation of distress, of saving the author’s life or the lives of other persons entrusted to the author’s care.’ 309. Milanovic focuses on the extent of Turkey’s obligation to protect Mr. Khashoggi’s life and not on the duty to investigate. However, to the extent that in the early days of Mr. 259 M. Milanovic, “The Murder of Jamal Khashoggi: Immunities, Inviolability and the Human Right to Life,” at 36, 2019 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3360647 61