By Ben Hubbard and Nick Cumming-Bruce
An attempt by Saudi Arabia to halt an investigation into human rights abuses in Yemen went down to defeat on Thursday, as news broke that the kingdom’s crown prince said in an upcoming documentary that he bears “all the responsibility” for the killing of the writer Jamal Khashoggi, but denied prior knowledge of the plot.
The twin developments showed that despite backing from the United States under President Trump and Saudi attempts to build international support in an escalating conflict with Iran, the kingdom’s human rights record — and, in particular, the conduct of its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — remains under harsh scrutiny on multiple fronts.
A group of experts, assigned by the United Nations Human Rights Council, has documented atrocities committed by both sides in Yemen’s civil war, and in particular the shattering impact on civilians of airstrikes and other abuses by the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi rebels. The investigators, barred from entering Yemen, have interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses, and examined an array of other evidence.
Saudi Arabia sought to cut short the investigation, but on Thursday the nations on the Human Rights Council, meeting in Geneva, voted 22 to 12 to reject the Saudi effort, with 13 other countries not voting.
That setback came after the release of a preview of a “Frontline” documentary that addresses the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Mr. Khashoggi at a time when Saudi Arabia hopes memories of the case, and the outrage it provoked, are fading.Mr. Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi writer who had criticized Prince Mohammed in opinion articles in The Washington Post, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul nearly a year ago, shocking the world and damaging the reputation of the crown prince and his efforts to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil.It is unclear whether the comments by Prince Mohammed, 34, made in December, will alter the widespread belief that he authorized the assassination of Mr. Khashoggi. A C.I.A. assessment found that the crown prince, a son of the Saudi king, had likely ordered the killing — a conclusion shared by many officials of the United States and other countries.
The crown prince, who would like to be seen in the West as a liberalizer and modernizer, is also the architect of the four-and-a-half year war effort in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that has contributed to creating what the United Nations has called the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis.
Saudi officials have denied that Prince Mohammed had any prior knowledge of the operation against Mr. Khashoggi.
“It happened under my watch,” Prince Mohammed told Martin Smith, a reporter for “Frontline,” according to a trailer released on Tuesday for a documentary to be broadcast on Tuesday. “I get all the responsibility. Because it happened under my watch.”
Turkish and Saudi officials have described a complex operation that led to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, who had fled waves of arrests of clerics and activists in Saudi Arabia, as Prince Mohammed consolidated his power, to settle near Washington.
On Oct. 2 last year, Mr. Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for an appointment to obtain a document he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée. He was met by 15 Saudi agents who had flown in hours earlier on government jets. According to Turkish officials, one was a specialist in autopsies, who brought a bone saw.
They killed and dismembered him, and disposed of his body, which has yet to be found.
Turkish officials and a United Nations investigator who examined the killing have accused the Saudis of an elaborate cover-up involving a body double and teams of technical experts who cleansed the crime scene before the Turks were given access.
When asked how such an operation could take place without his knowledge, the prince said he could not stay abreast of every act in his country or government.
“We have 20 million people,” he said, according to the trailer. “We have 3 million government employees.”
He also said that Saudi agents could have used government jets without his knowledge, adding, “I have officials, ministers to follow things and they’re responsible, they have the authority to do that.”The conversation took place near the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in December, two months after Mr. Khashoggi’s killing. The trailer for the documentary, “The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” does not contain video or audio recordings of the prince. The quotes are recounted by Mr. Smith.
His interview was one of just a handful of times Prince Mohammed has spoken publicly about Mr. Khashoggi’s killing.
The Saudis have put 11 suspects in the killing on trial, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against five of them. But the court proceedings have been shrouded in secrecy. The Saudis have not identified any of the suspects by name, and diplomats who have attended court sessions have been sworn to silence.Absent among the suspects is Saud al-Qahtani, a powerful aide to Prince Mohammed who United States officials say oversaw the operation. Mr. al-Qahtani was removed from his position as an adviser to the royal court, but his status and whereabouts remain unclear.In a report on the killing released in June, Agnes Callamard, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions for the United Nations human rights agency, said the Saudi trial had been “clouded in secrecy and lacking in due process.”The experts investigating Yemen have identified people they linked to international crimes there. It is not clear whether Prince Mohammed’s name is on that list.
At the Human Rights Council on Thursday, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador, Abdulaziz Alwasil, accused international experts on Yemen of seeking to legitimize the Houthis and denounced their findings as unfounded and “full of lies.”
With the backing of some other Arab states, the Saudis had lobbied hard to promote a different approach: a resolution that acknowledged human rights violations by all parties in Yemen and, instead of an independent investigation, aid for an inquiry by a human rights commission set up by the Saudi-backed government of Yemen. Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the council last year.
The Saudi effort to end the investigation failed.
“It’s a diplomatic reality-check for Saudi Arabia,” said Marc Limon, a former diplomat who heads the Universal Rights Group, a research center. “It shows Saudi Arabia is not as powerful and influential as it would like to think it is.”
Member nations of the council have also called on Saudi Arabia to account for killings, torture and detention to silence dissent among Saudis, including in the Khashoggi case.
No comments:
Post a Comment