Saudi Prince subject of Legal Complaint during Paris visit
Newslooks- PARIS (AP)
A human rights group said it filed a legal complaint with a Paris court on Thursday alleging complicity by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince – who is visiting France – in the gruesome 2018 killing of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The Washington-based group, Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, called on French authorities to open a criminal investigation of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was scheduled to meet French President Emmanuel Macron for a working dinner later Thursday.
In a statement on its website, the group said it filed a 42-page complaint arguing that the prince was an accomplice to the torture of Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018 and his disappearance.
DAWN focuses on human rights violations in Gulf Arab autocracies, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It said two other rights groups backed its call for a French investigation and argued that the prince should not have immunity from prosecution because he is not the Saudi head of state.
“As a party to the U.N. Conventions against torture and enforced disappearances, France is obliged to investigate a suspect such as Bin Salman if he is present on French territory,” Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN’s executive director, said in the statement.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
French President Emmanuel Macron plans to welcome Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to his presidential palace and offer him dinner Thursday, marking another step in the Saudi leader’s diplomatic rehabilitation less than four years after the killing of writer and critic Jamal Khashoggi.
Macron’s office described the meeting on Thursday evening as “a working dinner.” It will cap a long day for the French leader: He was in Guinea-Bissau, wrapping up a three-day visit to Africa, on Thursday morning.
The Saudi prince is making his first official visit to the European Union — he stopped in Greece before France — since the 2018 killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The U.S.-based journalist’s body was dismembered with a bone saw, according to Turkish officials.
France and other European nations are seeking to secure sources of energy to lessen their dependence on oil and gas supplies from Russia. France is also a major weapons and defense supplier to Gulf nations.
The prince has been steadily attracting big-name investors back to the kingdom since Khashoggi’s killing. He has also reset Saudi relations with Turkey, a key step toward rehabilitating his international standing.
Western intelligence determined that Prince Mohammed was complicit in the killing. The prince lost appalled supporters in the West who had previously been cheering his social reforms inside the kingdom. He maintains he had no knowledge of the operation that was carried out by people who directly reported to him.
Macron was one of the highest-profile world leaders to meet the prince shortly after the killing, during a tense chat caught on camera at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina in 2018. They have met several times since.
