In the end it was just a mix-up. When a Saudi citizen wanted to board a plane to Riyadh at Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport on Tuesday, he was surprised by police officers who took him away. The French authorities initially assumed that Khalid al-Otaibi was wanted by the international police authority Interpol. A Royal Guard man accused of belonging to the riot party who launched the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Kingdom's consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. The Saudi authorities immediately announced that the police had arrested an innocent man. The arrested man had "no connection" to the killing of Khashoggi, said the Saudi embassy in Paris and called for the man's "immediate release".On Wednesday, the French authorities announced that the person arrested was another man with the same name.
Christoph Ehrhardt
Correspondent for the Arab countries based in Beirut.
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The mistake is not only unpleasant for the French police and the Saudi victim of mistake, but indirectly also for the Saudi leadership.
The arrest brought back memories of the Khashoggi murder, which damaged the reputation of the kingdom like hardly anything else.
If the monarchy had their way, the Khashoggi file would have long been closed.
Even the embassy’s demand for release contained a passage that was more likely to damage one's own credibility than to help defend one's own citizen.
The Saudi judiciary had "passed its verdict on the guilty," it said.
"These are currently serving their sentences."
In Saudi Arabia itself, eight men were sentenced in an opaque court case at the end of 2019: five to death and three to prison terms.
The death sentences were later commuted to prison terms after one of Khashoggi's sons declared - presumably under pressure from the leadership - that he and his siblings had forgiven the murderers.
Human rights activists criticized that the real culprits got away.
The then UN Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard described the process as “theater” and its outcome as the “antithesis of justice”.
Back in the public eye
Such criticism returned to the public consciousness with the coverage of the arrest of Paris. Likewise, to admit the Saudi drudgery, the killing of Khashoggi and the operation of a riot troop in the first place. Or the American intelligence report that found that the Crown Prince and de facto ruler Muhammad Bin Salman had ordered the operation to capture or kill his critic. And above all the gruesome details of the crime - how after the murder the body of Khashoggi was cut up with a bone saw, how, according to the sound recordings of the Turkish authorities, one of the murderers spoke of a "sacrificial animal" and the fact that the remains of the Crown Prince critic were after as before, every trace is missing.
With the quick release of the “fake” Khalid al-Otaibi, Saudi Arabia is spared at least days of reporting about a possible extradition to Turkey, where the “real” Khalid al-Otaibi will be tried in absentia. But the mix-up comes at an inopportune time for Riyadh. Only days ago the Saudi press identified signs of a “new era” when, of all people, French President Emmanuel Macron was received in the kingdom - it was the first visit by a Western head of state in years.
For a long time, the West had made it clear to the leadership in Riyadh that a line had been crossed with the murder of Khashoggi.
The political leaders avoided the country.
Macron met Muhammad Bin Salman, pictures of a warm welcome went around the world.
French and Saudi companies signed more than two dozen letters of intent.
The French police now reminded the Saudi crown prince once again that the murder of Khashoggi abroad does not expire as easily as he might have hoped.