Suspect in Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing arrested in France

Posted by harsh sultayia on December 8th, 2021

French police on Tuesday arrested a suspected member of the hit team that killed Saudi intelligencer Jamal Khashoggi as the man was about to board a flight from Paris to Riyadh, French law enforcement sources said. 

  Khashoggi\'s fiancé ate the detention of the suspect and said he should be fulfilled for his part in the 2018 payoff. But the Saudi Embassy in Paris said the arrested person\"has nothing to do with the case in question.\"

\" Thus the Kingdom\'s delegacy expects his immediate release,\"it said in a statement.  

 A French police source and a judicial source named the man as Khaled Aedh Al-Otaibi-the same name as a former member of the Saudi Royal Guard who\'s linked in US and British warrants lists, and aUN-commissioned report, as having been involved in Khashoggi\'s payoff. 

 The police who detained him were acting on a 2019 arrest leave issued by Turkey, the country where Khashoggi was killed, according to the police source. 

  Khashoggi, a Washington Post intelligencer and critic of Saudi Arabia\'s de facto sovereign, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was last seen entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul onOct. 2, 2018. Turkish officers believe his body was dismembered and removed. His remains haven\'t been plant. 

 A US intelligence report released in March this time said Prince Mohammed had approved the operation to kill or capture Khashoggi. The Saudi government has denied any involvement by the crown Napoleon and rejected the report\'s findings.  

 Last time, a Saudi court jugged eight people for between seven and 20 times over the payoff, but none of the defendants was named. The trial was criticised by a UN functionary and mortal rights contenders who said the engineers of the murder remained free. 

\"This could be a major advance in the hunt for justice for Jamal Khashoggi,\" former UN investigator Agnes Callamard said of the Paris detention.  

 In her 2019 report for the United Nations, Callamard named Al-Otaibi as being part of a Saudi platoon that killed Khashoggi and dismembered his body before flying back to Saudi Arabia. 

 Callamard, now head of rights group Amnesty International, said more evidence was needed to prove that the man held in France is the same person she linked in her report.  

 The police source said the detained man was being held at a border police detention installation at Charles de Gaulle field, near Paris, and would be taken to court in the centre of the megacity on Wednesday morning for a hail on his repatriation to Turkey. 

 Last weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron held face-to- face addresses in Saudi Arabia with Prince Mohammed, getting the first major Western leader to visit the area since Khashoggi\'s murder.