The appointment of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as prime minister, announced this week by royal decree, is taking on greater significance abroad than at home, where he has long enjoyed broad powers and is the de facto ruler. This country is considered According to the AFP report.
King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia appointed his son Mohammed bin Salman as prime minister and his second son Prince Khalid as defense minister in three royal decrees issued on Tuesday.
“The crown prince’s new role as prime minister is in line with the king’s previous duties, including representing the kingdom on foreign trips and presiding over summits he hosts,” a Saudi official told Reuters.
The official, who asked not to be named, added: “The crown prince, by order of the king, previously supervises the main executive bodies of the government on a daily basis, and his new role as prime minister is in this context. Noting that, “Such delegation of duties has happened many times in the history of the kingdom.”
According to AFP, the appointment came less than a week before a deadline for the administration of US President Joe Biden to investigate whether Prince Mohammed enjoys judicial immunity in cases brought against him in US courts. is it or not
In recent years, a series of lawsuits have been filed against the crown prince, the de facto ruler of the world’s largest oil exporter, in the United States, the most important of which is related to the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his country’s consulate in Istanbul. According to the AFP report in 2018.
According to Reuters, the 2018 killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul damaged the reputation of Prince Mohammed and strained the kingdom’s relations with the United States and other Western allies.
And the 2018 US intelligence report on Khashoggi’s assassination concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had “authorized” his kidnapping or murder.
Prince Mohammed denied ordering Khashoggi’s murder, but said he was ultimately responsible for Khashoggi’s murder because it happened while he was in power.
After his appointment as prime minister, human rights advocates and critics of Saudi Arabia this week worried that the move was an attempt to bolster claims for immunity and avoid prosecution.
Sarah Lee Whitson, Democracy Now’s executive director for the Arab world, confirmed that it was “a last-ditch effort to imagine a new title for him” and a “ploy” to whitewash his image, according to AFP.
In October 2020, two years after Khashoggi’s murder, Democracy Now for the Arab World, an organization founded by the late Saudi dissident journalist, along with Khashoggi’s fiancee Khadijah Cengiz, filed a lawsuit in the United States accusing Mohammed bin Salman. . Involvement in a “conspiracy” that led to the kidnapping and chaining, drugging, torture and assassination of Khashoggi.
According to AFP, US President Joe Biden last year declassified an intelligence report that concluded bin Salman approved the operation targeting Khashoggi, something Saudi officials strongly denied. They reject it.
Legal cases against the Saudi crown prince in the courts are not limited to Khashoggi’s case, but he is named in a separate lawsuit in the United States by Saad al-Jaberi, a former US intelligence official who is currently in self-imposed exile in Canada. Is.
Al-Jaberi, who has worked closely with US authorities for a long time in covert counter-terrorism operations, said in his complaint that “Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent an assassination team to kill him in Canada in 2018.
In another case filed in France, Lebanese journalist Ghade Owais accused Prince Mohammed bin Salman of being involved in a plot to hack his cellphone and distribute “stolen personal photos” to defame him and prevent him from working. He talked about human rights issues. According to the AFP news agency
The immunity issue came to a head this summer when a US judge gave the State Department until August 1 to say whether it believed Prince Mohammed was fit to be prosecuted.
However, the Biden administration, which visited Saudi Arabia in July after he pledged during his campaign to treat the kingdom as a “sanctuary state,” has 60 days to decide its position. requested and the new deadline ends on Monday.
King Salman of Saudi Arabia appointed the crown prince as prime minister in his place, and there is no doubt that this new position will increase the power of bin Salman, who is considered the de facto ruler of the kingdom. to “AFP”.
According to Omar Karim, an expert on Saudi politics at the University of Birmingham, no changes are expected within the kingdom due to the new position.
According to AFP, Karim says the Saudi crown prince “was already in complete control and faced no threat that he could counter with a (better) prime ministership.”
At the same time, it is unclear whether his tenure as prime minister will strengthen his immunity since King Salman remains at the helm.
According to Whitson, this is “sort of a temporary thing”, noting that “the appointment notes that if the monarch is present, the monarch himself heads the cabinet.”
Others point out that “King Salman presided over the cabinet meeting on the same day that the position of the new prince was announced.”
As for the immunity problem, if it goes beyond that in the United States, it is likely to appear in other countries.
Last July, two NGOs and their French lawyer announced that they had filed a lawsuit against the prince for his involvement in the torture and enforced disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Democracy Now for the Arab World and Trail International said the 42-page complaint confirmed that Mohammed bin Salman was “complicit in the torture and enforced disappearance of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.” “, and that he is “not immune” from being prosecuted because he is the crown prince, not the head of state.”
Source: Lebanon Debate
