French President Emmanuel Macron has cut short his African tour to receive Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) for a dinner at the Elysee Palace on Thursday evening.
Salman came to Paris from Athens, where he was received by the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Michael Wiegel
Political correspondent based in Paris.
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After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Salman was considered persona non grata in the EU.
In the Elysée Palace, Realpolitik is invoked to justify the Crown Prince's invitation.
The conversation was supposed to be about energy and armaments deals.
The Greens protested the invitation.
"France is not a doormat for dictators who want to redeem themselves on the international scene," said Green party leader Julien Bayou.
"France sells its diplomacy for a few drops of oil."
Outrage over the "murderer prince"
The non-governmental organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), founded by Khashoggi before his assassination in 2018, and the Swiss organization Trial International filed a lawsuit in Paris on Thursday against the crown prince for “aiding in torture and enforced disappearance”.
They invoke universal jurisdiction.
The Secretary General of Amnesty International, the Frenchwoman Agnès Callamard, was indignant at how Macron was making "the murderer prince" socially acceptable again in Europe.
"The visit to France, like Joe Biden's get-together in Saudi Arabia, doesn't change the fact that MBS is a killer," she said.
Callamard had investigated the Khashoggi case as the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings.
Macron met Salman in Saudi Arabia in December 2021.