Alain Acco & Tassilo Hmel

PARIS (Reuters) – A suspected murderer of Jamal Khashoggi from Saudi Arabia was detained at Roissy airport in Paris, as he tried to board a plane to Riyadh. This was according to a source within the police and a judicial source.

It was just days following face-to-face meetings between the French President Emmanuel Macron and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. This marked the first time a major Western leader had visited the Kingdom since Khashoggi’s death.

“I welcome the arrest of one of Jamal’s killers today in #France,” his fiancee Hatice Cengiz said on Twitter (NYSE:). France should either try him and extradite him to another country that is able to investigate him and bring him up to trial, as well as to the man who ordered Jamal’s murder.”

Khashoggi was a critic for Prince Mohammed and was last seen in the Saudi consulate at Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Turkish officials think his body was removed and dismembered. He has not been located.

According to police sources, the suspect was identified as Khaled Al-Otaibi. He is a former member of Saudi Arabia’s Royal Guard.

Al-Otaibi is listed on the U.S. and UK sanctions lists for being implicated in Khashoggi’s murder. He was also on a French wanted-list.

Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog, said that “Excellent news was the French police did NOT turn a blindeye to the presence on Khaled al-Otaibi’s national territory.” “Finally, there is a protagonist capable of speaking.”

“ABHORRENT KILLING”

According to Reuters, he was detained on the grounds of a Turkish warrant from 2019. French prosecutors are now investigating the possibility of extradition.

The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation in Britain reported that Al-Otaibi was also mentioned as Altaibi in a report. It said Al-Otaibi “was involved in the unlawful murder of Jamal Khashoggi” in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2, 2018. He was part of a 15-man team from Saudi Arabia.

Al-Otaibi was born in 1988. The report stated that Al-Otaibi “was involved with the concealment evidence at the Saudi Consul’s Residence following the murder,” while the U.S. Department of Treasury reported: “The Saudi officials which we sanction were involved in Jamal Khashoggi’s abhorrent death.”

According to a March U.S. intelligence, Prince Mohammed was said to have approved the execution of Khashoggi’s murder or capture operation. Saudi Arabia’s government denied involvement in the killing or capture of Khashoggi and also rejected the findings.

EXTRADITION?

France is a major arms supplier to Saudi Arabia, and it has been under pressure to reduce its sales due the Saudi-led coalition against the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, which are now the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

Macron rejected last week accusations that Macron was legitimizing the crown prince. He said the many crises in the region could not be solved if we ignored Saudi Arabia.

Al-Otaibi was arrested on the grounds of a Turkish warrant, according to a judicial source. Source said that the authorities are still trying to verify his identity. It was not possible for them to know when extradition might occur.

It wasn’t clear how or when Al-Otaibi got to France.

French Interior Ministry declined comment. The Saudi embassy in Paris also refused to comment. CIC, the Saudi government media agency, did not respond immediately to our request for comment.