The Washington-based group Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, called on French authorities to launch a criminal investigation into Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was due 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 alleging the prince was complicit in Khashoggi’s torture at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 and his disappearance. DAWN focuses on human rights abuses in the Gulf Arab empires, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It said two other rights groups supported its call for a French investigation and argued that the prince should not be immune from prosecution because he is not Saudi Arabia’s head of state.
France ‘obliged to investigate’
“As a party to the UN conventions against torture and enforced disappearances, France is obliged to investigate a suspect like Bin Salman if he is present on French soil,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. French police officers guard the closed entrance to the Tower Louis XIV owned by the Saudi crown prince in Louvsien outside Paris on Thursday. (Julien de Rosa/AFP/Getty Images) The Saudi prince is making his first official visit to the European Union since Khashoggi’s 2018 assassination at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The journalist’s body was dismembered with a bone saw, according to Turkish officials. Bin Salman arrived in Greece on Wednesday after a three-day visit to Africa. France and other European nations are seeking to secure energy sources to reduce their dependence on oil and gas supplies from Russia. France is also a major arms and defense supplier to the Gulf states. The prince has been steadily attracting major investors back to the kingdom since Khashoggi’s murder. He has also restored Saudi Arabia’s relations with Turkey, a key step towards restoring its international standing. Turkish author Hatice Cengiz, right, fiancee of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, poses next to a portrait of Khashoggi after unveiling it on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on October 1, 2021. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images ) Western intelligence agencies found that Prince Mohammed was complicit in the assassination. The prince has lost formidable supporters in the West who had previously cheered his social reforms within the kingdom. He claims he was not aware of the business done by people who reported directly to him. Macron was one of the top world leaders to meet the prince shortly after the assassination, during a tense conversation caught on camera at the Group of 20 summit in Argentina in 2018. They have met several times since then.
