A French judge will look into complaints against Saudi crown prince over Khashoggi's killing

PARIS (AP) — A French investigating judge will examine a complaint by two rights groups accusing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of involvement in the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, France’s national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said Saturday.

The prosecutor’s office, known as the PNAT, said the case will now be handled by an investigating judge from the crimes against humanity unit after a May 11 ruling by the Paris Court of Appeal.

The complaint was filed by Trial International and Reporters Without Borders. The groups accuse the Saudi crown prince of complicity in torture and enforced disappearance over the killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist and Washington Post columnist who was brutally killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

Khashoggi’s body was dismembered and has never been found.

The PNAT said the Paris Court of Appeal found the complaints admissible because the possibility that the case could be classified as a crime against humanity — potentially including the underlying crimes of torture and enforced disappearance — could not be ruled out at this stage.

The prosecutor’s office said it took note of the court’s decision, while adding that the ruling did not invalidate its own interpretation of the French criminal procedure rules governing whether the groups were entitled to file the complaint as civil parties.

The French complaint was initially filed in 2022, during a visit to France by Prince Mohammed. The crown prince had faced international isolation after Khashoggi’s killing but has since been received again by Western leaders and dignitaries.

The opening of a French judicial inquiry does not mean Prince Mohammed has been charged or that French judges have found him responsible. It means an investigating judge will examine whether the complaint can lead to further proceedings.

Prince Mohammed has denied ordering Khashoggi’s killing but has said it happened under his watch as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.

U.S. intelligence agencies previously concluded that he approved the operation that led to the killing.

Saudi Arabia held a closed-door trial over the killing and said it punished those responsible, but rights groups criticized the proceedings as opaque and insufficient.

FILE - People hold posters of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, near the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, on Oct. 2, 2020. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel, File)

PARIS (AP) — Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath said French authorities are seeking to deport him on the grounds that he is a threat to public security, accusing France of targeting him over his pro-Palestinian activism.

Shaath, 54, said in a May 14 video statement posted online that the move was part of what he described as a broader campaign to silence Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause in France.

Shaath helped found the pro-Palestinian organization Urgence Palestine after the start of the Israel-Hamas war. He accused French authorities of targeting him after earlier legal proceedings failed.

France’s Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Shaath said in the video that the deportation move followed earlier difficulties renewing his French residency papers, despite his family ties in France. He also alleged that his bank account had been closed without warning and that his health insurance card had been suspended, saying the measures affected his ability to work, travel and receive care.

Shaath said he and his family would challenge the proceedings before French and European courts.

Shaath, who is Egyptian and Palestinian by birth, previously coordinated the Egyptian chapter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. He has long linked his Palestinian activism with opposition to authoritarian rule in the Arab world.

In a 2022 interview with The Associated Press after his release from an Egyptian jail, he described his activism — from Egypt’s 2011 pro-democracy uprising to his work with the Palestinian-led boycott movement against Israel — as “civil, nonviolent action against injustice, against inhumane treatment and against occupation as well as dictatorship.”

Shaath founded the Egyptian chapter of the BDS movement in 2014. He was arrested in Egypt in 2019 and released in January 2022, after more than 2 1/2 years in detention.

He said at the time that Egyptian authorities never formally charged him and that he had been held in a packed, bug-infested cell before later being isolated in a windowless room.

French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Shaath’s release from Egyptian detention in 2022.

Shaath is married to a French citizen and has a French-Palestinian daughter.

FILE - In this undated image from the Free Ramy Shaath Facebook page, Ramy Shaath poses for a photo Jan. 2, 2015, in Cairo, Egypt. (Free Ramy Shaath Facebook page via AP, File)