You’ve arrested the wrong man over Khashoggi’s murder – Saudi Arabia to Franc
French police have arrested a Saudi national suspected of involvement in the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as Saudi officials said they believed it was a case of mistaken identity.
The man was detained by border police on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Turkey as he was about to board a flight to Riyadh from Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport, judicial and airport sources told the AFP news agency, asking not to be named.
The Khashoggi report tests US-Saudi Arabia relations
Investigators on Tuesday were seeking to confirm that the man carrying a passport in the name of Khalid Alotaibi was indeed the suspect by the same name sought by Turkey and sanctioned by the US over the gruesome killing of Khashoggi that unleashed a wave of global anger.
The Saudi embassy in Paris issued a statement saying the man arrested “has nothing to do with the case in question” and demanded his immediate release.
“Extensive checks on the identity of this person showed that the warrant did not apply to him… he was released,” the statement from the prosecutor’s office said.
Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist and critic of Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler known as MBS, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was last seen entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Turkish officials believe his body was dismembered and removed. His remains have not been found.
News of the arrest – when it was thought he was indeed the man sought by Turkey – had triggered a wave of reactions, with rights groups and Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, expressing relief that such a high-profile suspect would be judged.
A 2019 UN investigation report said Al-Otaibi was a member of a 15-man Saudi team involved in killing Khashoggi after the journalist went to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to obtain a document to allow him to marry Cengiz.
The arrest had come at a sensitive time, just days after French President Emmanuel Macron held face-to-face talks in Saudi Arabia with Prince Mohammed, becoming the first major Western leader to visit the kingdom since Khashoggi’s murder.
Macron considers Saudi Arabia vital to help forge a region-wide peace deal with Iran, as well as an ally in the push against hardline groups from the Middle East to West Africa.
Culled from AlJazeera
