A prime suspect in Jamal Khashoggi’s killing has been arrested by French authorities in Paris. The Saudi man Khaled Aedh Alotaibi was nabbed by the French police at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on Tuesday.
He is one of 26 Saudi nationals sought by Turkey in connection with the killing. According to a senior Saudi official, the arrest was due to mistaken identity, with those involved in the murder already imprisoned in Saudi Arabia.
According to RTL radio, Mr Alotaibi, a 33-year-old former Saudi royal guard who was traveling under his own name, was detained in judicial confinement.
Jamal Khashoggi, was a leading opposer of the Saudi government. He got killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.
Saudi Arabian officials claimed that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in a “rogue operation” carried out by a team of agents who were dispatched to persuade him to return to the country.
According to the Turkish government, the agents were acting under orders from the highest levels of the Saudi government.
The killing sparked a worldwide outcry and damaged the reputation of Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He has denied any wrongdoing.
In 2019, a Saudi court announced the conviction of eight people in connection with the murder.
The court found that five of them were responsible for directly participating in the killing and sentenced them to death, which were later commuted to 20 years in prison. Three others were sentenced to seven to 10 years in jail for covering up the crime.
The Saudi case was described as “the antithesis of justice” by then-UN Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard. Ms Callamard’s 2019 investigation found that Khashoggi was “the victim of a deliberate, premeditated murder” carried out by the Saudi state.
This week’s arrest is just days after French President Emmanuel Macron became the first substantial Western head of state to meet with the Saudi crown prince since Khashoggi’s murder.