A Paris judge will investigate the 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi after rights groups filed a complaint against Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, French sources have told AFP.
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Both Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) and the kingdom faced intense international uproar over the assassination of Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia‘s consulate in Istanbul.
Khashoggi, a US resident who wrote critically about the oil-rich kingdom in The Washington Post, was strangled and then dismembered inside the consulate on 2 October, 2018.
In a 2021 report, US intelligence claimed the crown prince was directly responsible for the killing.
However President Donald Trump has since denied MBS’ role saying the prince “knew nothing” about the journalist’s murder.
Khashoggi’s employer, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), and the rights group Trial International had petitioned the French courts on the matter during MBS’ visit to France in July 2022.
They were subsequently joined by a complaint from press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
“An investigating judge from the crimes against humanity unit will now investigate the complaint” for torture and enforced disappearances, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) confirmed when contacted by AFP.
Khashoggi widow seeks probe in France over phone hacking before killing
An ‘abominable crime’
It comes after years of legal wrangling, with the prosecutor’s office opposed to opening a case in France on admissibility grounds.
But in a decision handed down on Monday, the court of appeal ruled in the rights groups’ favour, which DAWN hailed as a key step towards obtaining justice for the journalist’s killing.
“The crime of which Jamal Khashoggi was a victim is an abominable crime, decided and planned at the highest level of the Saudi state, which had a journalist executed who was a dissident and independent voice,” said Emmanuel Daoud, a lawyer for RSF.
Trial International‘s lawyer, Henri Thulliez, said there “should no longer be any obstacle to opening a judicial investigation into the atrocious crime committed against Jamal Khashoggi”.
Rights groups demand justice on anniversary of Khashoggi murder
In 2019, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Agnès Callamard (now head of Amnesty International), published a damning investigation into what the watchdog called “the unlawful death of Mr Jamal Khashoggi”.
Based on interviews with Saudi personel, Turkish intelligence operatives, recordings of telephone conversations and security cameras, the report claimed Khashoggi’s murder constituted an extrajudicial killing, which the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was responsible for.
Callamard said the assassination also constituted a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, of the prohibition against the extra-territorial use of force in time of peace, an act of torture under the terms of the Convention Against Torture, ratified by Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia “completely rejects” UN Khashoggi killing report
The Saudi assembly Shura Council roundly rejected the report’s findings.
(with newswires)
