Almost four years after the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is received in France for the first time. President Emmanuel Macron wanted to meet him at 8:30 p.m. for a working lunch at the Élysée Palace. Human rights groups are protesting the meeting, which further rehabilitates bin Salman on the international stage. According to US intelligence, bin Salman approved of Khashoggi's murder at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
"Mohammed bin Salman's visit to France (...) does not change the fact that he is a manslayer," said Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on the murder of the government critic. “Will the dismembered body of Khashoggi be on the agenda at the Emmanuel Macron-MBS meeting? The climate chaos? human rights? (...) No, it will be about oil and guns," wrote former green presidential candidate Yannick Jadot on Twitter.
Khashoggi's Turkish fiancée also condemned Macron's meeting with bin Salman. "I am shocked and outraged that Emmanuel Macron received my fiancé Jamal Khashoggi's executioner with all honors," Hatice Cengiz told AFP. "The increase in energy prices because of the war in Ukraine cannot justify our exonerating those responsible for Saudi Arabian politics to political opponents in the name of a supposed realpolitik."
French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire welcomed the Crown Prince on Wednesday evening when he arrived in Paris. Bin Salman traveled from Greece. The Crown Prince owns a Palace of Versailles-style residence near Paris, which he bought in 2015 for 275 million euros. It was considered the most expensive property in the world at the time. It was built, of all people, by a cousin of Khashoggi, who was later murdered.
US President Joe Biden recently visited Jeddah as part of his Middle East tour and met bin Salman there. During the election campaign, he declared that he wanted to treat Saudi Arabia like a pariah state. Macron, for his part, traveled to Saudi Arabia in December.
The increased interest in Saudi Arabia is also a consequence of the Ukraine war and the associated explosion in energy prices. The West has so far tried in vain to persuade Saudi Arabia to increase oil production so that the price of oil falls and inflation is curbed.
Bin Salman sees the Khashoggi affair as a "tragedy" that is now over. According to Riyadh, those responsible have been identified and convicted. Two years ago, a court in Saudi Arabia sentenced eight men to between seven and 20 years in prison for the murder. The Crown Prince rejects any alleged joint responsibility.
The 59-year-old Khashoggi, who wrote for the Washington Post, went to the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 to pick up papers for his upcoming wedding. According to official information from Turkey and the USA, a 15-man commando from Saudi Arabia was waiting there, murdered him, dismembered his body and made the remains disappear.
Khashoggi-founded human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) and Trial International filed a criminal complaint in Paris on Thursday accusing bin Salman of complicity in the crime. "The French authorities should immediately launch a criminal investigation into MBS," said Dawn CEO Sarah Leah Whiston.
