PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday warmly ate Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for addresses in Paris, defying wrathfulness sparked by hosting the controversial tyrannizer lower than four times after the murder of intelligencer Jamal Khashoggi.
The meeting is the rearmost step in the politic recuperation of the de-facto leader of the area who came a leper in the West following the payoff of Khashoggi by Saudi agents inside Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate.
Macron warmly saluted the sovereign widely known as MBS ahead of a regale, with the two men enjoying a warm handshake that they emphasised by using all four hands.
Shaking off review from rights groups and Khashoggi’s fiancé, Macron also guided MBS up the way on the red carpet into the Elysee Palace. MBS, seen by sympathizers as an ambitious and by critics as a dictator with a ruthless band, arrived in France following a visit from US President Joe Biden to Riyadh before this month. On his way to France, he stopped in Greece this week, his first trip to the EU since the murder of Khashoggi.
The payoff of Khashoggi was described by a UN inquiry as an “ extrajudicial payoff for which Saudi Arabia is responsible ”.
US intelligence agencies determined that MBS had “ approved ” the operation that led to Khashoggi’s death. Riyadh denies this, condemning mischief operatives.
“ I’m scandalised and outraged that Emmanuel Macron is entering with all the honours the cutthroat of my fiancé, Jamal Khashoggi, ” his widow Hatice Cengiz, who had awaited outside the consulate in Istanbul when her hubby faded, said on Thursday.
“ All the transnational examinations carried out up to this point recognize the responsibility of MBS in the assassination, ” Cengiz said.
Amnesty International clerk general Agnes Callamard said she felt “ profoundly troubled by the visit, because of what it means for our world and what it means for Jamal( Khashoggi) and people like him ”. MBS is a man who “ does not tolerate any dissent ”, she added.
