Rights groups hit out at Macron decision to host Mohammed bin Salman

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Human rights campaigners have hit out at 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 murder nearly four years ago of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of the world’s second largest oil producer, arrived at Orly airport on Wednesday night after a red-carpet stopover in Greece and was greeted by the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, French media reported

He will be welcomed at the ?lys?e Palace on Thursday for a working dinner at which the French president is expected to ask him to boost Saudi oil production amid mounting western concern over winter energy shortages following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The visit marks a further step in Prince Mohammed’s rehabilitation after Khashoggi was murdered at 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 justify further investigation of high-level Saudi officials including Prince Mohammed, who US intelligence agencies have alleged approved the operation. Riyadh has blamed rogue agents.

The US president, Joe Biden, travelled 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 Britain’s Boris Johnson followed suit in March.

Human rights groups were strongly critical. Prince Mohammed’s visit to France and Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia “do not change the fact that [Prince Mohammed] is anything other than a killer,” said Agn?s Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, describing the 36-year-old crown prince as a man who “does not tolerate dissent”.

Callamard, who at the time of the killing was the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings and who led its independent investigation, told Agence France-Presse she was “profoundly troubled by the visit, because of what it means for our world and what it means for Jamal [Khashoggi] and people like him”.

The crown prince’s reception by world leaders was “all the more shocking given many of them at the time expressed disgust and a commitment not to bring him back into the international community”, she added, denouncing “double standards” and “values … being obliterated in the face of concern about the rising price of oil”.

The head of Human Rights Watch in France, B?n?dicte Jeannerod, tweeted that Bin Salman could “apparently count on Emmanuel Macron to rehabilitate him on the international stage despite the atrocious murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the pitiless repression of all criticism by the Saudi authorities, and war crimes in Yemen”.

Julien Bayou, head of the opposition Green party (EELV), said he was “shocked” France was “completely abandoning the idea of defending human rights in the world … Emmanuel Macron has been forced to roll out the red carpet because we need oil. Fossil fuel dependency means we are selling our principles cheap.”

Two NGOs, the US-based Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), which Khashoggi founded in 2018, and the Swiss campaign group Trial International, on Thursday filed a joint formal complaint in Paris against Prince Mohammed for “complicity in torture” and “enforced disappearance”.

The initiative, supported by the Open Society Justice Initiative, was filed 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, Prince Mohammed does not benefit from diplomatic immunity.

“As a party to the conventions against torture and the enforced disappearances, France is obliged to investigate a suspect like Bin Salman if he is on French territory,” said Dawn’s executive director, Sarah Leah Whitson, according to Le Monde.

Abdullah Alaoudh, Dawn’s Gulf region director, told FranceInfo radio that Prince Mohammed’s visit to France was “shameful. We think he is trying to whitewash his crimes … He is an unstable dictator and walking hand in hand with him is dishonourable.”

Legal experts said it was unlikely Prince Mohammed would be summoned during his stay since it would normally take weeks before an investigating magistrate was appointed. The crown prince may, however, be deterred from returning to France by the complaint, a lawyer for the NGOs told the paper.