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The Saudi citizen arrested on Tuesday at a Paris airport for his alleged involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was released this Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. local time, after the French authorities concluded that it was an error due to identity confusion . The 33-year-old arrested man has the same name as a former member of the Saudi Royal Guard, identified as a member of the command that executed the journalist in 2018.
The man put under arrest on Tuesday, December 7, by the French police at the Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, is called Khaled Al-Otaibi.
It is the same name as that of a former member of the Saudi Royal Guard, which appears in American and British documents, and in a report of the United Nations (UN) commission, as implicated in the murder of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi , in Turkey.
Late on Tuesday, the Saudi Arabian embassy in Paris had communicated that the detained person had “nothing to do with the case in question.”
The authorities of the Gulf country added that “Khaled Al-Otaibi” is a very common name in the kingdom, and that the man that the French thought they had on their hands was actually serving his sentence in a Saudi Arabian prison, along with with “all the defendants in the case.”
Prosecutors from the European country acknowledged their mistake and stated on Wednesday that the verifications carried out show indeed that the arrest warrant issued by Turkey, which had triggered the arrest when the man’s passport was scanned during border controls, was not applied to him.
“The exhaustive checks on the identity of this person showed that the order did not apply to him (…) and he was released,” said the statement from the prosecution.
A murder that occurred three years ago and that continues to cause a strong international commotion
Khashoggi, a journalist for the Washington Post, among others, and a critic of the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia – Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman – was last seen alive when entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.
US and Turkish officials maintain that a squad of Saudi hitmen was waiting for him there, dismembering and hiding his body. To date, the journalist’s remains have not been found.
A UN investigation report published in 2019 exposed that a man named Khaled Al-Otaibi was a member of the squad.
The terrifying murder sparked international outrage that continues to resonate to this day. Western intelligence agencies accuse bin Salman of authorizing the assassination.
On Tuesday, news of the arrest – when it was thought that he was indeed the man wanted by Turkey – set off a wave of backlash, with human rights groups as well as Khashoggi’s fiancee expressing her respite that such a high-profile suspect was tried.
The announcement of the arrest also came at the time when, at the end of last week, French President Emmanuel Macron held talks in Saudi Arabia with Prince bin Salman, becoming the first major Western leader to visit the kingdom. since Khashoggi’s murder.
Strongly criticized by several human rights organizations, the French president defended himself by declaring that the kingdom is a partner that cannot be dispensed with to forge peace in the region.
The “symbolic” trial in Istanbul of the Khashoggi murderers
Khaled Al-Otaibi is one of the 26 Saudis accused by Turkey of having murdered the journalist, in a trial that began in October 2020, without the presence of the accused, since Saudi Arabia rejected his extradition.
Two of the 26 being tried in absentia in Istanbul are former aides of bin Salman, but no Saudi official has ever faced Turkish justice in person for the crime.
Al-Otaibi is also one of 17 people the U.S. Treasury designated in 2018 for sanctions for his role in the assassination.
In September 2020, a Saudi court overturned five death sentences handed down following a closed-door trial in the kingdom, instead sentencing the defendants to 20 years in prison.
The process was criticized by a UN official and dismissed as a farce by human rights defenders, who denounce that the masterminds of the murder are still at large.
Reuters, AFP
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