Difficult sequence for Mohammed Ben Salman. The Saudi Crown Prince, designated Friday February 26 by the United States as the sponsor of the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in Istanbul, is now the subject of a complaint for “crimes against humanity”, in connection with this file. The complaint, a first in the annals of international justice, was filed on Monday 1er March, by the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) before the Attorney General of the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, Germany.
The German prosecution’s seizure concerns the persecution of journalists in Saudi Arabia, a country ranked 170e rank out of 180 in RSF’s press freedom index. It is based on the principle of universal jurisdiction, in force across the Rhine, which authorizes the magistrates of a State to judge human rights violations, even if the crime was committed outside the national territory and its perpetrators and victims are non-nationals.
The organization, which first gave this information to the World and three other dailies (Washington post, Guardian and Süddeutsche Zeitung), cites in support of his approach not only the emblematic Khashoggi case, but also the case of the 34 journalists currently imprisoned in the kingdom, the highest total in the world after China (117). According to RSF’s investigation, 22 of them were subjected to ill-treatment, 15 to acts of torture and 2 to sexual harassment.
“In Saudi Arabia, journalists, who constitute a civilian population, are victims of widespread and systematic attacks, in application of a state policy aimed at punishing them or silencing them”, supports the press release of RSF, published Tuesday March 2. According to the NGO, these criteria constitute a crime against humanity in the German penal code.
End of inadmissibility
Besides Mohammed Ben Salman, known as “MBS”, the strong man of Riyadh, four other Saudi officials are identified as suspects: Saoud Al-Qahtani, the media adviser to the dolphin, mastermind of the policy of gagging journalists in Arabia ; Ahmed Al-Assiri, the number two in intelligence, accused of having supervised the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, on October 2, 2018, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul; and two of the performers of this operation which led to the suffocation and dismemberment of the journalist: Maher Al-Mutreb, an intelligence officer, and Mohammed Al-Otaibi, the consul.
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