The Paris prosecutor’s office said Wednesday, December 8 that checks have established that the Saudi national arrested at Roissy on Tuesday, December 7 was not affected by the warrant issued by Turkey in the Khashoggi case.
The man was suspected of being involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in Istanbul. During the report of the Council of Ministers, Gabriel Attal indicated that the government wanted a clarification as quickly as possible.
“There are legal proceedings and verifications that are underway. We want a clarification to be provided as quickly as possible on this subject,” he told reporters.
A security source told Reuters that the Saudi national was a namesake of a suspect implicated in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and was apparently not the person subject to an international arrest warrant issued by Turkey.
According to this source, the individual should be released by the end of his 48-hour judicial detention period, which ends this Thursday morning.
His passport had triggered an alert
In the morning, a police source told Reuters that the Saudi national had been apprehended because his passport had triggered an alert. The Saudi Arabian embassy in Paris said for its part that there was an error in the identity of the individual arrested, and called for his release.
In a United Nations investigative report published in 2019, Khaled Aedh Al-Otaibi is cited as a member of a commando of 15 Saudi agents involved in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist critical of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and the power in place in Riyadh.
The French police have the information on the passport as well as a rather poor quality photograph via the Turkish warrant, a police source said, adding that additional information could be requested from Turkey.
