The French authorities detained the Saudi Arabian Khaled Aedh Al-Otaibi at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on Tuesday, one of those suspected of having murdered in 2018 to the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, as reported by the French press.
The suspect, the subject of an Interpol search and arrest warrant, has been arrested while embarking for Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia. According to sources cited by local media, the man has been identified because showed his real passport when he was about to board. The suspect will now be presented to the Paris Attorney General’s Office and will remain under arrest while it decides on his extradition.
Khaled Aedh Al-Otaibi, 33, a former member of the Saudi royal guard, was one of the 20 people Interpol was looking for for this case. His arrest comes just days after the controversial visit of Emmanuel Macron to Saudi Arabia, where the French president met with the crown prince Mohamed bin Salman, the first meeting between the two since Khashoggi’s assassination at the hands of suspected Riyadh agents.
Khashoggi, a dissident living in the United States and a columnist for the Washington Post, entered that diplomatic legation on October 2, 2018 to obtain the documentation he needed to marry his partner, Hatice Cengiz, but never left again. Three years later, no remains have been found of the 59-year-old journalist.
On October 31, 2018, Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, Irfan Fidan, concluded that shortly after entering the consulate, the journalist was suffocated to death and his body dismembered. Riyadh has admitted that Saudi government agents killed Khashoggi at the consulate in Istanbul and sentenced five people therefore, without offering specific details of the trial. For his part, Bin Salman has always denied his involvement.
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
