Argentina agrees to pursue case against Saudi crown prince over Yemen war crimes

Argentina has agreed to proceed with a case against Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over war crimes in Yemen at a request by Human Rights Watch.

HRW has formally requested Argentine judicial authorities to use a domestic constitutional clause to arrest and prosecute bin Salman, known as MbS, for war crimes in Yemen and the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as he arrived in Argentina to attend a G20 summit.

Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director of HRW, tweeted on Wednesday that a prosecutor has agreed to proceed with the case, and asked a judge to request information from Yemeni and Saudi authorities regarding war crimes.

She also said that the prosecutor had also asked Argentina's Foreign Ministry whether the crown prince's diplomatic status might allow a legal proceeding to go forward.

“The Argentine judiciary, by taking steps towards a formal investigation, is sending a clear message that even powerful officials like Mohammed bin Salman are not above the law and will be scrutinized if implicated in grave international crimes," Whitson said in an emailed statement to The Independent.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing a former Riyadh-friendly government back to power.

Bin Salman, who is also Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, is known as the architect of the Yemen war.

The HRW official said the case against MbS will at the very least thwart his attempt to repair his battered image after the murder of Khashoggi which is blamed on him.

"A cloud of suspicion will loom over him as he tries to rebuild his shattered reputation at the G20, and world leaders would do well to think twice before posing for pictures next to someone who may come under investigation for war crimes and torture,” Whitson said.

“At a minimum, it will be an embarrassment for him at a time he is trying to project normalcy,” Shibley Telhami, a professor focused on Middle East affairs at the University of Maryland, said in a post on his Twitter account.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler arrived in Buenos Aires on Wednesday for the G20 summit from Tunisia, where he was welcomed by protesters who denounced him as a murderer of Khashoggi, who was killed after visiting the Saudi consulate in Turkey’s largest city last month.

Khashoggi, 59, a one-time royal insider who had been critical of the crown prince recently, was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

Following weeks of denial of any involvement in Khashoggi's disappearance, the Saudi regime eventually acknowledged the “premeditated” murder, but has sought to distance the heir to the Saudi throne from the assassination.

A Saudi prosecutor later said Khashoggi’s body had been dismembered, removed from the diplomatic mission and handed to an unidentified “local cooperator.”

Furthermore, a recent report by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said that the spy agency had concluded that bin Salman had been behind the gruesome crime.

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