French police have released the man arrested on Tuesday at a Paris airport who was believed to have been wanted in connection with the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

CGTN reported that Saudi authorities insisted the man who was detained had "nothing to do with the case" and that the incident was "mistaken identity."

The 33-year-old was stopped at Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport in Paris on December 7 as he was trying to board a flight to Riyadh after his name matched that of an arrest warrant sent to Interpol last year.

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Following identity checks by French prosecutors he was released avoiding a possible extradition to Turkey to face a life sentence for murder.

Will this impact Saudi-French relations? 
Tuesday's arrest came only days after the French President visited Saudi Arabia on a tour of Gulf states. 

It was the first visit to the kingdom by a Western leader since the killing of the Saudi journalist. 

Emmanuel Macron defended the trip, saying he had not "forgotten" about the Khashoggi case and the trip did not mean he "endorsed anything."

Who was Jamal Khashoggi and what happened to him? 

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi wrote for the Washington Post and, despite formerly being close to the royal family, at the time of his death, was an outspoken critic of the Saudi government. 

On October 2, 2018, the writer went into the embassy in Istanbul for an appointment to settle divorce proceedings to allow him to marry his Turkish fiancee. There is CCTV that shows Khashoggi entering the consulate - but he never came out. 

He was killed inside the building in what Saudi Arabia described as a "rogue" operation to try to convince Khashoggi to return to the kingdom. His body has never been found. 

Turkish prosecutors said in 2018 that the journalist was suffocated almost as soon as he entered the consulate, and that they believed his body was dismembered and destroyed. 

The United Nations investigated the death of the journalist in 2019 and described his murder as an "extrajudicial killing for which Saudi Arabia is responsible." The Central Intelligence Agency in the U.S. accused Saudi Crown Prince Salman of ordering the assassination.