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The non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders said today that it had filed a complaint in Germany for crimes against humanity against Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, AFP reported. The lawsuit refers to bin Salman’s alleged responsibility for the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Hashoghi and “the systematic persecution of journalists in Saudi Arabia,” BTA reported. The complaint was filed yesterday with the Prosecutor General of the Federal Court of Karlsruhe, whose jurisdiction includes the handling of criminal cases abroad. In addition to the Crown Prince, the lawsuit is against four other high-ranking Saudi officials. Along with the de facto head of the kingdom, “suspected of directly ordering Hashoghi’s assassination,” Reporters Without Borders also referred to his former “close adviser” Saud al-Qahtani, “former deputy intelligence director” Ahmed al-Asiri, the former general Consul in Istanbul Mohamed al Otaibi and Maher Mutreb, an “intelligence officer” who commanded the “team that tortured and killed” the Washington Post journalist. The Karlsruhe prosecutor’s office confirmed to AFP that it had received the complaint. The document, the content of which has been read by the agency, describes in detail the abuses committed against 34 journalists imprisoned in the kingdom before 2011-2019, 33 of them, such as blogger Raif Badawi, a defender of freedom of expression, convicted in 2014. .for every 1,000 blows with a stick and 10 years in prison for insulting Islam, – they remain behind bars. “Torture”, “violence” and “sexual coercion”, “kidnapping”, “illegal deprivation of liberty”. . . The NGO defines these actions as “crimes against humanity”. According to her, the German judicial system is “better adapted” to deal with them due to its universal jurisdiction, which allows a country to prosecute the perpetrators of the most serious crimes, regardless of their citizenship and the place where they were committed. “Furthermore, Germany has regularly called for justice in the cases of Jamal Hashoghi and Raif Badawi,” Reporters Without Borders reported. “Our request is … to analyze the situation so that the prosecution formally initiates an investigation”, “for the first time in the world” and “issues arrest warrants,” explained Christian Mir, director of the German branch. of the human rights organization. “For the first time, charges of crimes against humanity are being brought against (senior officials in) Saudi Arabia for the way they treat journalists,” Reporters Without Borders general secretary Christoph Deloir told reporters, calling for “justice. “. Saudi Arabia ranks 170th out of 180 countries in the NGO’s press freedom index, AFP reported.
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