Mohamed Bin Salman is already in Argentina. It has been the first world leader to arrive to Buenos Aires, where on Friday and Saturday will participate in the G20 summit. The crown prince arabia does not seem concerned by the complaint filed by the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) in the face of the justice argentina to be arrested for alleged war crimes committed by your country in Yemen. Just on the ground, his entourage, consisting 400 people, traversed the whole city with traffic cleared to the Embassy of your country, a palace of French style in which it is accommodated and which is contiguous with the legation of Spain. At the airport he received the argentine foreign minister, Jorge Faurie. The report of HRW was in the hands of a federal prosecutor, who now must collect evidence that is then analyzed by a judge. Bin Salman can be quiet: the complexity of the procedure and their diplomatic status will neutralize any possibility of arrest.
The prosecutor Ramiro González has begun this Wednesday the procedure against Bin Salman. The first step has been to ask the judge to Ariel Sand, in charge of the dossier, to see if the crown prince has a “process pending in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Yemen,” associated with the reporting of HRW and take measures “relating to determine the status of the prince Mohammed bin Salman”. Are necessary steps. The argentine Constitution recognizes the universal jurisdiction to try war crimes and torture, but provided that there are no ongoing investigations in the country of origin.
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The complaint against Bin Salman was filed Monday by the executive director of HRW, Kenneth Roth. The argument of the NGOS is that Argentina must intervene because the alleged war crimes committed by the Army of arabia in Yemen are unpunished. Bin Salman could be responsible for those crimes because he is the minister of Defence of the Kingdom. At the same time, HRW refers to the possible involvement of the prince in the death of journalist Betper Jamal Khashoggi in the Consulate of saudi arabia in Istanbul.
“The judicial authorities should assess the role of Mohamed Bin Salman in possible war crimes committed by the coalition led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen from 2015,” said Roth in a text uploaded to the website of the organization. “The participation of the crown prince at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires may allow the victims of abuse who were not able to see that justice is done in Yemen or Saudi Arabia can be obtained in the argentine courts”, he added. The attempt of HRW has as antecedent the most recent the cause that the federal judge of argentina María Servini de Cubría is still in Buenos Aires for the crimes committed in Spain during the franco regime.
The director of the Americas Division of HRW, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said that the proceedings conducted by the prosecutor argentine are a recognition of “the validity of universal jurisdiction and the obligation of states to investigate this type of crimes. “We hope that the process will be with the greater agility, as it says in the resolution itself, which invokes the principle of procedural economy in the interest of justice,” added Vivanco. Judge Sand accepted right away the suggestions of the attorney and as requested reports to Yemen, Turkey, and also to the International Criminal Court on possible processes against Bin Salman.
In any case, the principe arabia not altered his agenda in Buenos Aires. Bin Salman may not be arrested during the summit because it is in “diplomatic mission special”, that is to say, that is a sent one officer with the rank of head of State protected by the Convention on Special Missions, an agreement dating from 1969. To Vivanco, “the light of the decisions taken by the argentine justice, the government should revoke the immunity special Mohammed bin Salman, if you do not want to give the impression that this armoring of the justice to a high-ranking official prosecuted for heinous crimes”.