Reporters Without Borders reminds the president that his guest “has detained 27 journalists and is suspected of having ordered the murder of Jamal Kashoggi”
From an international outcast to a dinner with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the Elysée Palace. Macron is holding “a working dinner” with controversial Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman (MBS) this Thursday, despite criticism from non-governmental human rights groups at his dinner.
Paris was the second stop, after Greece, in Bin Salman’s first official visit to Europe following the assassination by Saudi agents of journalist Jamal Khasoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018. The CIA accuses Bin Salman of properly orchestrating the operation. to assassinate Khasoggi, a journalist who criticizes Saudi power and wrote for The Washington Post.
The dinner between Macron and Bin Salman takes place less than two weeks after US President Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia. The “fist punch” between Biden and Bin Salman marked the return of MBS to the international scene amid the war in Ukraine and in the face of international fears about its impact on food security and the rise in oil prices.
On the dinner menu, energy supply and control of Iran’s nuclear program, Saudi Arabia’s biggest regional rival. Elysee sources assure that Macron will also discuss the issue of respect for human rights in the Middle Eastern country during the meeting with Bin Salman.
Human rights groups and French opposition politicians have criticized Macron for hosting Bin Salman at the Elysee. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reminded the president that his guest “has detained at least 27 journalists and bloggers and is suspected of having ordered the murder of Jamal Kashoggi”.
«The murderer prince’s rehabilitation will be justified in France and in the United States by arguments of ‘realpolitik’. But in fact it is haggling that prevails, make no mistake,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard wrote on Twitter. “The visit of MBS to France and Joe Biden to Saudi Arabia does not change the fact that MBS does not more than a murderer,” added Callamard, who was the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial crimes at the time of Khasoggi’s murder and received death threats for investigating the case.
«On the menu of the dinner between Macron and MBS, the dismembered body of the journalist Kashogui? Climate chaos? Peace and human rights? Ecological Debt Day? No! Oil and weapons! Exactly the opposite of what should be done,” MEP Yannick Jadot, a former environmentalist for the French presidential election, criticized on Twitter.
Paris defends itself against criticism. “If we want to face the consequences of the crisis (energy and food) at the same time and if we want to have a weight in the region, the only way to do that is by talking to the key actors. It’s not ‘realpolitik’, it’s pure politics. It’s about being effective, about weight,” Elysée sources point out.
Simultaneously with Bin Salam’s visit to Paris, two NGOs, Dawn (Democracy for the Arab World Now) – founded by Kashoggi – and Trial International, filed a complaint with French justice against the Crown Prince for “complicity in torture and enforced disappearance” of the murdered journalist.
The freelance’s fiancé, Hatice Cengiz, is “shocked and outraged” by the fact that “Macron receives the executioner with all credit” from her fiancé. Khasoggi’s body, which was dismembered, was never found. The crown prince denies ordering the journalist’s murder, although he says he bears responsibility as Saudi leader.
Source: La Verdad
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