Mohammed Ben Salmane must in particular meet with Emmanuel Macron. A visit which comes as Saudi Arabia prepares to execute seven people who were minors at the time of the alleged offenses, the secretary general of Amnesty International is indignant on franceinfo Thursday.
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“We restore the image of someone who absolutely does not deserve it”, protested Thursday, June 15 with the International Editorial Board of Radio France Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, while the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia began a visit of several days in France.
Mohammed Ben Salmane must in particular meet with Emmanuel Macron during this state visit, which “Sorry” long. For the Secretary General of Amnesty International, “President [Emmanuel] Macron makes himself the main architect of the rehabilitation of Mohammed Bin Salman; he had already done it for three or four years”.
The number of executions has exploded in the country
Agnès Callamard deplores the context in which this official visit is taking place. In its annual report on the death penalty, published in mid-May, Amnesty International denounced an explosion in the number of executions in Saudi Arabia. According to the NGO, 196 people were executed in the kingdom in 2022, compared to 65 in 2021.
Its general secretary judges “The timing of this rehabilitation is all the more ill-chosen as Saudi Arabia is about to execute seven young people who were children at the time of their alleged crime, one of whom was only 12 years old”. “We are in the process of rebuilding an international system, but on the basis of what name of a pipe? On the basis of what values?”, annoys Agnès Callamard.