Rights groups and a Biden-era US intelligence report alleged that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was behind the murder
France has opened an investigation into the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi after NGOs accused Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of complicity in the killing.
The 59-year-old journalist and Washington Post columnist was killed in 2018 while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. His body is believed to have been dismembered and was never recovered. Saudi authorities acknowledged that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate but insisted that rogue officials carried out the operation without authorization from the leadership.
In July 2022, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) – Khashoggi’s former organization – and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) filed a legal complaint accusing Mohammed bin Salman of complicity in torture and enforced disappearance as part of an organized group. The complaint alleged that he ordered “the murder by asphyxiation” of Khashoggi.
France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) opposed opening the investigation, a position criticized by RSF lawyer Emmanuel Daoud as “realpolitik in the name of France’s superior economic interests so as not to anger the Saudi authorities.”
The Paris Court of Appeal has now ruled that “the possibility that these acts could be classified as crimes against humanity cannot be ruled out.”
“An investigating judge from the crimes against humanity unit will now examine the complaint,” the prosecutor’s office told AFP on Saturday.
Khashoggi once served as an adviser to the Saudi government and was close to the royal family before becoming a prominent critic of the kingdom’s leadership and relocating to the US. Saudi prosecutors said the journalist died after being forcibly restrained and injected with an overdose of drugs during what they described as a failed attempt to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia.
A US intelligence report released by the Biden administration in 2021 concluded that Mohammed bin Salman exercised “absolute control” over the kingdom and that Saudi security organizations had approved an operation to “capture or kill” Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia rejected the assessment as “false and unacceptable.”
US President Donald Trump, however, said last year that the crown prince “knew nothing” about the plan to kill the journalist.
