Human rights teams condemn EU summit with Saudi crown prince

Human rights activists have condemned the EU’s choice to host the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, at a Brussels summit, cementing his worldwide rehabilitation six years after the brutal homicide of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto chief is considered one of six Gulf representatives collaborating within the first summit between the EU and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which additionally contains Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The gathering, the initiative of the outgoing head of the European Council, Charles Michel, seems to be possible expose the variations between the 2 regional blocs on Ukraine, the Center East and their future ties on commerce and entry to visas.

“We don’t see eye to eye on all matters. And naturally, negotiating an announcement with this a part of the world shouldn’t be all the time simple,” a senior EU official mentioned earlier than the one-day assembly on Wednesday. “To be frank, that’s not simple with our 27 member states.”

Requested whether or not any of the EU’s member states had qualms concerning the invitation to Prince Mohammed, a senior EU diplomat mentioned: “The query you raised shouldn’t be raised right here.”

US intelligence companies concluded in 2021 that the Saudi crown prince had authorized the homicide of Khashoggi, a Washington Submit columnist, who lived in exile within the US and was one of many regime’s strongest critics. The killing, torture and dismemberment of the dissident contained in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul sparked international horror, leaving the dominion briefly a global pariah. Riyadh blamed rogue brokers and rejected the US intelligence accounts.

The rehabilitation of Prince Mohammed was effectively below manner in mid-2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when Joe Biden travelled to Saudi Arabia and greeted the crown prince with a fist bump. The then British prime minister Boris Johnson, and the leaders of France and Germany, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, additionally held talks within the kingdom with Prince Mohammed. Macron hosted the crown prince in Paris in July 2022, after a red-carpet greeting from the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

A number of senior leaders won’t participate within the Gulf summit, which precedes a separate gathering of EU leaders on Thursday. The German chancellor, Scholz, and the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, will miss the Gulf summit, though Macron will converse for Scholz.

Claudio Francavilla, an affiliate EU director at Human Rights Watch, mentioned: “MBS has been portraying himself as a reformist, as a progressive ruler, however the actuality is that repression in up to date Saudi Arabia has by no means been so sturdy as it’s below his rule. Individuals obtained sentenced for many years in jail, twenty years in jail for tweets, even to dying for some tweets.” The EU summit “dangers serving to him whitewash his picture” he added.

Saudi authorities have executed no less than 198 individuals thus far in 2024, the very best quantity recorded since 1990, in keeping with Amnesty Worldwide.

The senior EU official mentioned one goal of the summit was “to make our relationship with [Gulf countries] extra strategic”, referring to the battle in Ukraine and the disaster within the Center East.

Human rights was “all the time on the agenda” the official mentioned, including that they might not predict which chief might increase the subject. A briefing word launched by the EU didn’t seek advice from human rights.

The Center East will dominate the talks, however the EU additionally needs Gulf nations to log off an announcement on Ukraine. That has proved troublesome, and going into the talks, Gulf nations have been immune to even mentioning Russia within the closing communique, which is unacceptable for the EU aspect.

Francavilla argued that the EU might have interaction with Saudi Arabia and different Gulf states in different boards: “You don’t have to roll out the purple carpet, you don’t have to have a summit to have interaction. There are numerous methods by which you have interaction. They meet within the UN, they meet in Unga [the UN general assembly], they meet in different places. That is clearly not the aim of the summit. The summit is a present of closeness.”