Human rights activists objected to Emmanuel Macron’s decision to host Mohammed bin Salman for talks in Paris during the Saudi crown prince’s first visit to Europe since the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi almost four years ago.
Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of the world’s second-largest oil producer, arrived at Orly airport on Wednesday evening after a red carpet stopover in Greece and was greeted by French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, French media reported
He will be welcomed to the Elysee Palace on Thursday for a working dinner where the French president is expected to ask him to increase oil production in Saudi Arabia amid growing Western concerns about winter energy shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The visit marks a further step in the rehabilitation of Prince Mohammed after Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 in what a UN investigation described as “an extrajudicial killing for which Saudi Arabia is responsible”.
The inquiry concluded there was “credible evidence” to warrant further investigation into senior Saudi officials, including Prince Mohammed, who US intelligence agencies say approved the operation. Riyadh blamed rogue agents.
US President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier this month, greeting the crown prince with a fist bump, while Macron visited the kingdom for talks with him last December, and British President Boris Johnson followed suit in March.
Joe Biden bumps into Mohammed bin Salman during visit to Saudi Arabia – video
Human rights groups were highly critical. Prince Mohammed’s visit to France and Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia “do not change the fact that [Prince Mohammed] is anything but a murderer,” said Agnes Calamar, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, describing the 36-year-old crown prince as someone who “does not tolerate dissent.”
Calamar, who was the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings at the time of the killing and led the independent investigation, told Agence France-Presse that she was “deeply disturbed by the visit, because of what it means for our world and what it means for Jamal [Khashoggi] and people like him”.
The reception of the crown prince by world leaders was “even more shocking given that many of them at the time expressed disgust and commitment not to return him to the international community”, she added, condemning the “double standards” and “values … which have been wiped out amid concerns over the rising price of oil’.
The head of Human Rights Watch in France, Bénédict Jeanneraud, tweeted that Bin Salman “can clearly count on Emmanuel Macron to rehabilitate him on the international stage despite the brutal assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi authorities’ relentless suppression of all criticism and war crimes in Yemen”.
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Julien Bayou, head of the opposition Green Party (EELV), said he was “shocked” that France was “completely abandoning the idea of protecting human rights in the world… Emmanuel Macron was forced to roll out the red carpet because we need oil . Dependence on fossil fuels means we sell our principles cheap.
Two NGOs, the US-based Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), which Khashoggi founded in 2018, and the Swiss campaign Trial International, filed a joint formal complaint in Paris on Thursday against Prince Mohammed for “complicity in torture” and ” enforced disappearance’.
The initiative, supported by the Open Society Justice Initiative, was brought under universal jurisdiction, which allows a state to try crimes against humanity, war crimes and acts of torture committed outside its territory. The NGOs argued that as Crown Prince Mohammed does not enjoy diplomatic immunity.
“As a party to the conventions against torture and enforced disappearances, France has a duty to investigate a suspect like Bin Salman if he is on French territory,” Dawn executive director Sarah Leah Whitson said, according to Le Monde.
Abdullah Alaoud, Dawn’s Gulf region director, told FranceInfo radio that Prince Mohammed’s visit to France was “shameful. We think he is trying to cover up his crimes… He is an unstable dictator and walking hand in hand with him is dishonorable.”
Legal experts said it was unlikely Prince Mohammed would be summoned during his stay as it usually takes weeks before an investigator is appointed. However, the complaint could prevent the crown prince from returning to France, a lawyer for the non-governmental organizations told the newspaper.
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