R.Unido invites Mohamed bin Salmán to a state visit, according to official sources to the ‘Financial Times’

July 15 () –

The UK government is finalizing the details of a state visit by the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, which would take place around October or November this year, in what would be the leader’s first appearance ‘in facto’ Saudi on British soil since the scandal surrounding the murder of journalist Jamal Jashogi in Istanbul and in which the heir was implicated by US security agencies.

For now, official British sources have confirmed to the ‘Financial Times’ that the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already extended an invitation to the Saudi Royal House, although the precise logistics of the trip are still pending agreement. “It is something that corresponds to them, because we need them more than they need us,” according to one of these sources.

It should be remembered that, last year, the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson already held a meeting with Bin Salmán in Riyadh and that several British ministers have visited the kingdom since the journalist’s murder. The crown prince visited France last year, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

In public, Downing Street has declined to comment on such an invitation. A spokesman for the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has indicated that, in the event of an announcement, the details “will be released as normal” before noting that the Prime Minister maintains that the murder of Jashogi was a “terrible crime”. and that “Saudi Arabia must ensure that such an atrocity never happens again.”

It should be remembered that the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, directly implicated Bin Salman in the murder of the journalist in 2018 at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. However, the heir escaped in November 2022 from another lawsuit, the one filed by Jashogi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, given his diplomatic immunity as head of state of a foreign country.