Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia has been extended an official invitation to visit the United Kingdom, a sign that Western nations are softening their stance toward the kingdom in the wake of the brutal killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The Saudi Arabian de facto ruler, 37, is expected to travel to London in the late autumn as a result of the invitation, which was first reported by the Financial Times, a British daily business newspaper.
However, the British prime minister’s office has refrained from confirming whether it formally invited the Saudi crown prince.
The spokesperson for Premier Rishi Sunak stated, “We wouldn’t get into invitations for foreign leaders,” and that such visits would be “set out in the normal way.”
The Saudi leader’s trip would be his first to the United Kingdom since early in 2018, just before Khashoggi, a vocal opponent of the country and its crown prince, was killed and dismembered by a hit squad at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.
In contrast to Saudi Arabia’s insistence that the crown prince was unaware of the plot, the CIA came to the conclusion in 2018 that MbS had given the order to kill Jamal Khashoggi.
However, he later admitted that it happened “under my watch,” despite initially denying having ordered Khashoggi’s murder. The journalist’s murder was later attributed to “rogue agents” by Saudi officials.
The upcoming trip has sparked worries that London is preparing to ignore Khashoggi’s murder and other human rights abuses even more, particularly at a time when other Western countries are diplomatically endorsing bin Salman.
The most recent illustration of these welcomes was his nearly week-long stay in Paris last month, during which he met with French President Emmanuel Macron and attended a summit on climate finance.
The spokesperson for Sunak continued by saying that the prime minister considered Khashoggi’s murder to be “a terrible crime” and that Saudi Arabia “must ensure such an atrocity can never happen again.”
The invitation comes as Riyadh is wooing London to vote in November for its hosting of Expo 2030, which is in line with the kingdom’s so-called Vision 2030. The UK and the GCC (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) are currently negotiating a free trade agreement.
The Saudi crown prince was invited to the UK, which human rights organization Amnesty International criticized as “rolling out the red carpet” for him and allowing him to “use this visit to rehabilitate himself on the global stage.”
“Mohammed bin Salman and his government must be held properly accountable for abuses by Saudi officials, including Khashoggi’s murder, the pervasive use of torture in Saudi jails, and the indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Yemen,” she said.”
Truscott urged Sunak to take a confrontational 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 is serving a 27-year jail sentence after an unfair trial for her tweets supporting women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.”
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