Novinar Jamal Khashoggi
Khalid Alotaibi, 33, was detained by border police on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Turkey just before taking a flight to Riyadh from Charles de Gaulle Airport, judicial and airport sources said. His name appeared in a Washington Post investigation on the alleged hit squad, based on passport copies and travel details.
He is due to appear before prosecutors on Wednesday.
A Turkish court in 2020 began to try in absentia 20 suspects over the murder of Khashoggi, including two former aides to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Turkish prosecutors then indicted six more Saudi suspects over the killing later that year, but no Saudi official has ever faced justice in person in Turkey over the killing.
In September 2020, a Saudi court overturned five death sentences issued after a closed-door trial in Saudi Arabia, sentencing the accused to 20 years in prison instead.
Khashoggi - a prominent Saudi who lived in self-exile in the United States and wrote for The Washington Post - entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 to file paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancée.
Not 'forgotten'
According to US and Turkish officials, a waiting Saudi hit squad strangled Khashoggi and dismembered his body, which has never been recovered.
The gruesome murder sparked international outrage that continues to reverberate, with Western intelligence agencies accusing the Saudi crown prince of authorising the killing.
Tuesday's arrest of Alotaibi comes only days after French President Emmanuel Macron defended his decision to include Saudi Arabia in a tour of Gulf states, saying the visit did not mean that he had "forgotten" about the Khashoggi case.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the order to murder Khashoggi came from "the highest levels" of the Saudi government and the case led to tensions between Ankara and Riyadh.
But Erdogan has never directly blamed the Saudi crown prince and there have in recent months been signs of a thaw between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, with the Turkish foreign minister visiting Riyadh earlier this year in a bid to mend ties.
On the third anniversary of the killing, Khashoggi's widow Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting outside the consulate while the murder took place, accused the US of failing to hold Saudi Arabia accountable.
RC