A suspected member of the commando involved in the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, in Istanbul, would have been arrested on Tuesday, December 7, at Roissy – Charles-de-Gaulle airport and placed in judicial detention, Agence France-Presse learned from judicial and airport sources.
However, a doubt remains about the identity of the arrested person, his surname being very common in Saudi Arabia. It is not yet certain that the man arrested at Roissy is that of the Istanbul commando. There is a “Error on identity” of the arrested man, a Saudi representative told Reuters news agency in the evening.
A man named Khalid Alotaibi, 33, was arrested at 9:20 a.m. as he was about to board a flight to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. According to information from World, the border police entered it in the wanted persons file. The request corresponded with a red notice from Interpol. A man bearing this surname was indeed wanted in France with a view to extradition at the request of the Turkish authorities.
Identity checks
As per the procedure in such a case, he was placed in judicial detention, a form of police custody which can be put in place when there is an arrest warrant, and which can last up to 48 hours. .
This judicial detention, which is currently taking place within the confines of Roissy airport, should make it possible, through in-depth checks – in particular the taking of his fingerprints – to ensure that the man arrested is indeed the one suspected of ‘to have been part of the commando, that is to say that there is no mistake about the person. If this identity is confirmed, the man will be presented to the public prosecutor’s office near the Court of Cassation, which manages extraditions in France.
Once presented to a judge, the individual arrested on Tuesday can agree to be extradited to Turkey. In this case, the French justice may ask that he remain in France, free, under judicial control or under extradition detention, the time that Turkey makes an extradition request. In a few weeks, the court of appeal should then rule on the extradition request.
Opaque trial in Saudi Arabia
Collaborator of Washington post and critic of the Saudi regime after being close to it, Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated on the premises of his country’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, by a commando of agents from Saudi Arabia. He was 59 years old at the time of his death and his body, dismembered there, has never been found.
This arrest comes three days after Emmanuel Macron’s eagerly awaited meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman, known as “MBS”, designated by Turkish and American officials as the sponsor of the assassination.
This assassination plunged Saudi Arabia into one of its worst diplomatic crises and tarnished the image of the crown prince. After denying the assassination, Riyadh ended up saying that it was committed by Saudi agents who acted alone.
“We talked about everything without any taboos. And we were obviously able to evoke the question of human rights ”, said Emmanuel Macron. “The coming weeks and months will allow us to see if we move forward on this subject. ” The Head of State had justified his meeting with the Crown Prince, one of the first for a Western leader since this affair, because “Dialogue with Saudi Arabia is a necessity” because of his “Demographic, economic, historical and religious weight”.
After an opaque trial in Saudi Arabia, five Saudis were sentenced to death and three sentenced to prison terms – death sentences have since been overturned and commuted to sentences of up to twenty years in prison.