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Jamal Khashoggi died in Istanbul more than two years ago - his body was never found
Photo:
Hasan Jamali / AP
At 9:20 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Khaled Aedh A. wanted to board a plane to Riyadh when he was arrested by French border police.
The officials had discovered a red Interpol notice for the 33-year-old man from Saudi Arabia.
Khaled Aedh A. is wanted by international arrest warrant.
The allegation: He is said to have belonged to a murder squad that killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 and then had his body disappeared.
Now, according to the French authorities, it turned out that the officers had arrested the wrong man.
The arrested person was therefore not one of the suspects.
Checks had shown that an arrest warrant did not refer to the man, said the Paris prosecutor Rémy Heitz.
Khaled Aedh A. was released again.
Embassy demanded "immediate release" of the arrested
Doubts about the identity of the arrested already arose on Tuesday evening.
The Saudi Arabian embassy in Paris told Reuters news agency that there was a mix-up.
The airport man has no connection whatsoever to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
The embassy later published a communiqué on Twitter, demanding the "immediate release" of the detainee.
The Saudi Arabian judiciary has pronounced its verdict on the guilty and they are currently serving their sentences.
The alleged murderers of the Saudi Arabian journalist are said to have been 15 members of the royal guard of the Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, MbS for short.
Turkish and US authorities assume that the Crown Prince should have ordered the murder.
After weeks of denials, Riyadh finally admitted in 2018 that Khashoggi had been killed "in an unsuccessful arrest mission".
The French border police believed they had arrested the Crown Prince's former security officer.
A report by the former UN commissioner of the Khashoggi murder suggests that he was said to have been in the consulate in Istanbul at the time of the murder.
The name of the man arrested at the airport is very common in Saudi Arabia.
In the morning it was said on the radio station France Inter, but it could not be a mere name confusion.
The station reported in the morning that border controls at the airport had compared and scanned the suspect's passport with the passport that the Turkish authorities had sent them.
In addition to name and date of birth, biometric data were also recorded with the passport.
President Macron: "A very direct exchange"
The arrest comes just days after French President Emmanuel Macron became the first Western head of state to meet with the Saudi Crown Prince since October 2, 2018.
“We talked about everything without taboos and of course we also addressed the question of human rights.
It was a very direct exchange, ”Macron justified his trip.
A trial of 26 defendants in the case has been going on in Istanbul for well over a year.
The main suspects are a former close advisor to the Crown Prince and the country's former deputy chief of intelligence.
They are charged with inciting other defendants to commit murder under torture.
All of the defendants are Saudi Arabian citizens.
The court hears in her absence.
With material from the dpa news agency