On December 23rd, Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor announced the verdict reached in the trial that had begun in January of 11 men accused of killing Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul on October 2nd 2018 and cutting up his body with a saw. Five of the defendants were sentenced to death, three others were given a total of 24 years in prison, while the remaining three were acquitted.
The 11 are made up of members of the kingdom’s secret services, the royal guard, the Saudi armed forces, and the entourage of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). They were nearly all among the 15-strong team identifiers by the Turkish intelligence services sent by Riyadh to assassinate the Washington Post journalist.
At the end of a closed-door trial held in the absence of human rights organisations or the press, the prosecutor’s office announced that Prince Mohammed ‘s top aide Saud al-Qahtani was cleared of wrongdoing for lack of evidence, as was also the case for deputy intelligence chief General Ahmed al-Asiri, who was suspected of personally supervising the assassination.
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“This verdict is a whitewash which brings neither justice nor the truth for Jamal Khashoggi and his loved ones,” said Lynn Maalouf, Middle East research director Amnesty International. “The trial has been closed to the public and to independent monitors, with no information available as to how the investigation was carried out. The verdict fails to address the Saudi authorities’ involvement in this devastating crime or clarify the location of Jamal Khashoggi’s remains.”
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab issued a statement in which he said: “Saudi Arabia must ensure all of those responsible are held to account and that such an atrocity can never happen again.”
For the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnès Callamard, “By virtue of international humanitarian law, this murder is an extrajudicial execution for which Saudi Arabia is responsible”. In her damning 99-page report into Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, delivered on June 19th 2019 to the UN Human Rights Council, Callamard, who has expert experience in the field of human rights, stated there was “credible evidence, warranting further investigation of high-level Saudi Officials’ individual liability, including the Crown Prince’s”, while also underlining the procedural flaws of the then-ongoing trial, which she said should be suspended.
In an opinion article published in The Washington Post on December 24th, the day after the verdicts were announced, Callamard commented: “These verdicts are the antithesis of justice: the hit men are sentenced to death, potentially permanently silencing key witnesses, but the apparent masterminds walk free – barely touched by the investigation and trial. This is exactly what impunity looks like, and it must be denounced. Anyone who cares about freedom of the press – governments, as well as members of the public — must denounce this travesty until an actual impartial investigation holds those at the highest level responsible.”
To no surprise, following the verdict Washington was the only capital to hail what a White House senior official called “an important step in holding those responsible for this terrible crime accountable”, adding that “we encourage Saudi Arabia to continue with a fair and transparent judicial process”. But there were sev eral lawmakers who spoke out in criticism of the trial. Adam Schiff, the Democrat chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the verdicts were an effort to distance the Saudi leadership from the killing. “The suggestion that this was a rogue operation or a snap decision is contradicted by the evidence and common sense,” Schiff said in a statement posted on Twitter. “This sentence is a continuation of the Kingdom’s effort to distance Saudi leadership, including the Crown Prince, from the brutal assassination of a journalist and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi."
And what about France? It may be recalled that following the murder of Khashoggi, it took Paris almost two months to demonstrate its disapproval by deciding – after Washington, London and Berlin – to ban 18 Saudi nationals implicated in the assassination, and whose names were never publicly revealed, from entering France.
Questioned by the press as to whether France might halt weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, President Emmanuel Macron replied that he failed to see “the relationship between arms sales and Mr Khashoggi”. Showing no consideration for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had then just recently placed an embargo on her country’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Macron even declared, somewhat incensed, that it would be “pure popularity courting” to take such a decision.
It is true that France was then the third-largest arms supplier to the Saudis, behind the US and Britain, and that the kingdom was France’s third-biggest buyer of weapons, behind Egypt and India.
Does the one explain the other? What is certain is that it was difficult to find a more insignificant reaction than that of Paris to the verdict last week in Riyadh. Questioned, during a regular press briefing last Tuesday, about France’s reaction, a French foreign affairs ministry spokesman replied without giving any opinion on the way the trial was conducted nor the court’s ruling. “We have followed with attention the judicial procedure in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “We have always asked for the facts to be clearly established about this extremely serious crime, that all necessary investigations are pursued to the end, and that those responsible for the crime be tried. We underline our opposition to the death penalty at all times and all circumstances.”
It would be difficult to say less. The French president clearly found this diplomatic void to his satisfaction given that throughout last week, when he stayed at his official holiday residence at the Brégançon fort and with all the necessary time to weigh up the international reactions and to thumb through Agnès Callamard’s report, he gave no comment about the trial.
It is true that on December 23rd, the day the verdicts were announced by the prosecutor in Riyadh, an important event in the history of French-Saudi arms sales was discretely taking place in the port of Cherbourg. That day, three 32-metre armed ‘interception’ vessels were hoisted aboard the merchant ship Maliy B.S. for delivery to the Saudi navy.
Built by the Constructions mécaniques de Normandie (CMN) shipyards belonging to the French-Lebanese businessman Iskandar Safa (who is also the owner of the hard-right French weekly magazine Valeurs actuelles), the three boats were the first to be delivered from a total of 39 as agreed in a deal signed in 2018 and worth an estimated total of 540 million euros. About 20 of the vessels will be built in Cherbourg, the others in Saudi Arabia.
Built in aluminium and capable of a speed of 45 knots (85 kph), the ‘interceptors’ are in principle destined to be used in anti-terror and anti-piracy operations; but it is difficult to imagine what could stop them being used in the war in Yemen which the Saudis have been engaged in since 2015, leading an Arab coalition against the Yemeni Houthi movement. That is already the case with the CAESER truck-mounted howitzers sold by Paris to Riyadh, just like also the Leclerc tanks sold to the kingdom’s coalition partner, the United Arab Emirates.
In an interview in January 2018 when he was questioned about Emmanuel Macron’s foreign policy, Kenneth Roth, executive director of the NGO Human Rights Watch, applauded France’s approach to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Erdoğan’s Turkey, Victor Orbán’s Hungary and Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela. But, Roth added: “It’s easy to defend human rights when it’s free, when there’s no real cost in doing so. But when you’re dealing with Chinese or Saudi [business] contracts, or you’re dealing with Egypt’s potential assistance in fighting terrorism, Macron has been more resistant to standing up for human rights.”
Macron has made great progress during the past two years. As illustrated by his meetings with Xi Jinping, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi or Narendra Modi, he now openly adopts a refusal to, as he put it, “give lectures out of context” when major foreign trade issues are at stake.
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- The French version of this op-ed piece can be found here.