UK GOVT. INVITES SAUDI CROWN PRINCE FOR OFFICIAL VISIT, IN FIRST SINCE KHASHOGGI KILLING

Sun 16 July 2023:

The United Kingdom has invited Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for an official visit to the country, in the latest move by Western states to bring the kingdom back into the diplomatic fold amid a series of human rights concerns.

The invitation, first reported by the Financial Times, is likely to see the Saudi Crown Prince visit the UK in late Autumn. Downing Street has declined to confirm whether it extended a formal invitation to the Saudi leader, however, with prime minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson stating that “We wouldn’t get into invites for foreign leaders” and that such visits would be “set out in the normal way.”

Bin Salman’s visit would be his first to Britain since 2018, shortly before Saudi agents killed the exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, in an operation which American intelligence agencies concluded was ordered by the Crown Prince himself.

The upcoming trip has raised concerns that London is moving to further ignore Khashoggi’s killing and other human rights violations, especially at a time when other Western nations have been diplomatically embracing bin Salman. The latest example of such welcomes is his almost week-long stay in Paris last month, in which he met with French president Emmanuel Macron and attended a climate finance summit.

Sunak’s spokesperson addressed those concerns by stating that the prime minister’s position on the killing of Khashoggi was that it was “a terrible crime” and that Saudi Arabia “must ensure such an atrocity can never happen again.”

The reported invitation comes amid various developments between the two countries, with the UK currently negotiating a free trade deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – an organisation of which Riyadh is a leading member – and with Saudi Arabia courting Britain to vote in November for its hosting of Expo 2030, which is a key aim of the kingdom in line with its Vision 2030.

Polly Truscott, foreign policy adviser for Amnesty International, condemned the UK’s invitation of the Crown Prince as “rolling out the red carpet” for him and enabling him to “use this visit to rehabilitate himself on the world stage.”

She stated that “Mohammed bin Salman and his government must be properly held to account for abuses by Saudi officials, including Khashoggi’s murder, the widespread use of torture in Saudi jails and the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Yemen.”

Truscott also called on prime minister Sunak to adopt a confrontation stance during the visit, saying that he “must be prepared to confront the crown prince over the outrageous jailing of Salma al-Shehab, the Leeds PhD student who’s serving a 27-year jail sentence after an unfair trial for her tweets supporting women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.”