‘Yemeni Rights Group Sues Saudi Crown Prince in France’
PARIS (Dispatches) – A rights group filed a lawsuit against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his visit to France on Tuesday, accusing him of complicity in torture and inhumane treatment in Yemen, lawyers said.
The complaint on behalf of Taha Hussein Mohamed, director of the Legal Center for Rights and Development (LCRD), said the prince who is Saudi Arabia’s defense minister was responsible attacks that hit civilians in Yemen.
The case was filed in a Paris court as pressure grows on President Emmanuel Macron to curb arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which spearhead a coalition fighting Houthi fighters who control of most of northern Yemen and the capital Sanaa.
A Saudi government communications office and the royal court did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Saudi-led coalition regularly says it does not target civilians.
The rights group, based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, says on its website it monitors and documents rights’ violations in Yemen.
"He ordered the first bombings on Yemeni territory on March 25, 2015,” the group’s lawyers, Joseph Breham and Hakim Chergui, said in the complaint seen by Reuters.
"The existence of indiscriminate shelling by the coalition armed forces affecting civilian populations in Yemen can be qualified as acts of torture,” they wrote.
The lawsuit may embarrass Macron at a delicate moment in French-Saudi relations. France is the world’s third biggest arms exporter and counts the kingdom as one of its biggest buyers.
The lawyers cited UN reports and documentation by rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam on arbitrary detentions and the use of illegal cluster bombs.
The Saudi aggression against Yemen was launched in March 2015 in support of Yemen’s former Riyadh-friendly government and against the country’s Houthi Ansarullah movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective administration.
The offensive has, however, achieved neither of its goals despite the spending of billions of petrodollars and the enlisting of Saudi Arabia's regional and Western allies.
The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured during the past three years.
The United Nations says a record 22.2 million people are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. A high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the "catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there was a growing risk of famine and cholera there.
The complaint on behalf of Taha Hussein Mohamed, director of the Legal Center for Rights and Development (LCRD), said the prince who is Saudi Arabia’s defense minister was responsible attacks that hit civilians in Yemen.
The case was filed in a Paris court as pressure grows on President Emmanuel Macron to curb arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which spearhead a coalition fighting Houthi fighters who control of most of northern Yemen and the capital Sanaa.
A Saudi government communications office and the royal court did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Saudi-led coalition regularly says it does not target civilians.
The rights group, based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, says on its website it monitors and documents rights’ violations in Yemen.
"He ordered the first bombings on Yemeni territory on March 25, 2015,” the group’s lawyers, Joseph Breham and Hakim Chergui, said in the complaint seen by Reuters.
"The existence of indiscriminate shelling by the coalition armed forces affecting civilian populations in Yemen can be qualified as acts of torture,” they wrote.
The lawsuit may embarrass Macron at a delicate moment in French-Saudi relations. France is the world’s third biggest arms exporter and counts the kingdom as one of its biggest buyers.
The lawyers cited UN reports and documentation by rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam on arbitrary detentions and the use of illegal cluster bombs.
The Saudi aggression against Yemen was launched in March 2015 in support of Yemen’s former Riyadh-friendly government and against the country’s Houthi Ansarullah movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective administration.
The offensive has, however, achieved neither of its goals despite the spending of billions of petrodollars and the enlisting of Saudi Arabia's regional and Western allies.
The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured during the past three years.
The United Nations says a record 22.2 million people are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. A high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the "catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there was a growing risk of famine and cholera there.