Wednesday, December 8th, 2021
Confusion in France
Man arrested in the Khashoggi case is free again
In the case of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the French authorities arrest a suspect wanted on an arrest warrant. A little later he is released again – there was a mix-up. The man’s undoing was probably his widespread name.
One day after the arrest of a suspect in Paris in connection with the murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it emerged that there was a mix-up. The arrested person was not the one against whom Turkey had obtained an international arrest warrant, the public prosecutor in Paris said. “The identity checks have shown that the arrest warrant is not valid for the (arrested) person,” said public prosecutor Rémy Heitz in a statement. The man is at large again.
Saudi Arabia had already denied the previous evening that the arrested man was the wanted accomplice in the Khashoggi murder. “The citizen in question has no connection whatsoever to the matter,” said the Saudi Arabian embassy in Paris on Tuesday evening on Twitter. Those responsible for the murder have already been convicted in Saudi Arabia and the man must be released immediately.
The French border police arrested a man at Roissy airport on Tuesday morning who, according to judicial sources, had identified himself as 33-year-old Chalid A. for a flight to Riyadh. He was held on an international arrest warrant, it said. According to information from security circles in Saudi Arabia, a man of the same name has long been in prison there. “There are hundreds of Saudi Arabians with the exact same name. It’s a huge tribe that is spread across the kingdom,” it said.
Murdered three years ago
The 59-year-old government critic Khashoggi was murdered on October 2, 2018 in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. He had an appointment there to prepare for the wedding with his fiancée, a Turkish citizen. According to official information from Turkey and the USA, a 15-man squad was waiting in the representation, murdered him and had his body disappeared.
Both a UN special envoy and the US intelligence agency, the CIA, had come to the conclusion that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was directly implicated in Khashoggi’s assassination. This was vehemently rejected from Riyadh, but the case brought the de facto ruler under massive international pressure. In 2018, after weeks of denials, Riyadh finally admitted that Khashoggi had been killed “in an unsuccessful mission to arrest him”. Five death sentences were passed in a trial in Saudi Arabia, which were later commuted to prison terms.
French President Emmanuel Macron met the Saudi Crown Prince in Jeddah last week, despite the allegations. “We were of course also able to address the issue of human rights,” Macron said after his meeting with bin Salman. The coming weeks and months will show “whether we are making progress on this issue”.