By The European Times | Created at 2026-09-20 16:26:43 | Updated at 2026-09-26 18:27:47
6 days ago
From the court filing recorded on September 17, 2026, in the Saad al-Jabri case to the investigation into the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, now entrusted to a French investigating judge, legal proceedings are mounting against Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi state apparatus. Protected in the United States by his status as prime minister, the crown prince has never been exonerated on the merits of the case. While Riyadh promises six billion euros in investments in France and deploys its religious representatives across Europe, the legal cases, testimonies from dissidents, and rulings against the kingdom tell a different story: that of a regime seeking to convert its wealth into respectability.
September 17, 2026: A U.S. Case Still Active
The document filed on September 17, 2026, with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is not a new judgment convicting Mohammed bin Salman. It is a response filed in connection with the motions currently under review by the court. This procedural clarification is essential, but it by no means implies that the Saad al-Jabri case is over. The proceedings continue regarding two former high-ranking aides to the crown prince, Bader Alasaker and Saud al-Qahtani, and requests for information about their communications with individuals located in the United States.
The Federal Court of Appeals authorized these limited investigations after ruling on July 9, 2024, that the trial court had erred in refusing to allow any search for evidence regarding these communications. The Aljabri case docket shows that the parties continue to dispute the scope of the documents subject to disclosure and the alleged operation’s ties to U.S. territory. The stakes are high: determining whether associates of Mohammed bin Salman used intermediaries, students, or organizations based in the United States to locate a former high-ranking Saudi official whom Riyadh wanted to bring back—or make disappear.
Saad al-Jabri, the keeper of secrets whom Riyadh wanted to retrieve
Saad al-Jabri worked for thirty-nine years at the heart of the Saudi security apparatus. A counterterrorism specialist and advisor to Mohammed bin Nayef, the former interior minister and former crown prince, he maintained close ties with Western intelligence services, particularly those of the United States. He knew the networks, methods, and internal power dynamics of the monarchy. When Mohammed bin Salman ousted Mohammed bin Nayef to seize the title of crown prince in June 2017, al-Jabri became at once a dangerous witness, a holder of sensitive information, and one of the last representatives of the former center of power.
Fearing for his safety, he left Saudi Arabia for Turkey on May 17, 2017. Faced with pressure to return, he then sought refuge in Canada, where he arrived on September 12, 2017. According to his complaint, Mohammed bin Salman and his inner circle allegedly employed a variety of coercive measures: messages demanding his return, a ban on two of his children leaving the kingdom, the revocation of a scholarship granted to another son, a request for a Red Notice from Interpol, and pressure on countries likely to grant him asylum.
The U.S. Court of Federal Appeals also summarized the allegations regarding the use of the MiSK Foundation, created by Mohammed bin Salman, to mobilize a network of Saudi students in the United States. Information was reportedly obtained from al-Jabri’s relatives living in the U.S., enabling the Saudi authorities to discover that he was in Canada.
The “Tiger Squad” and the Alleged Toronto Operation
The most serious allegation in the complaint concerns an operation that was allegedly launched in October 2018, less than two weeks after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Saad al-Jabri claims that a team belonging to the “Tiger Squad”—composed of intelligence agents, military personnel, and forensic specialists—was sent to Canada to kill him.
According to the account provided to U.S. authorities, the agents allegedly attempted to enter Canada separately, posing as ordinary tourists. Border checks reportedly revealed the presence of forensic equipment and photographs showing that several travelers who claimed not to know one another actually belonged to the same group. Only one was reportedly allowed to enter, causing the alleged operation to fail.
Al-Jabri also claims that a fatwa authorizing his killing was issued in May 2020 and that a new plan, involving the United States, was reportedly being considered. A Canadian security agency reportedly warned him of a “credible and imminent” threat. The threat was reportedly considered serious enough that a response team was stationed outside his home and he was asked to cancel his travel plans and meetings.
These charges have not yet been adjudicated on their merits. They therefore cannot be presented as a definitive conviction. But they are neither vague nor anonymous: they appear in a 179-page complaint, comprising 414 paragraphs, regarding which the Court of Appeals found that certain elements warranted a genuine investigation into the evidence.
Mohammed bin Salman’s immunity: protection, never an acquittal
Mohammed bin Salman avoided these proceedings thanks to his appointment as Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia on September 27, 2022. A few weeks later, in the case filed by Hatice Cengiz, Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée, the Joe Biden administration officially informed the U.S. courts that a sitting foreign head of government enjoys immunity by virtue of his office.
On July 9, 2024, the Court of Appeals applied this doctrine to the al-Jabri case. It upheld the dismissal of the claims targeting Mohammed bin Salman personally because he held the office of Prime Minister. The ruling specifies that this immunity applies regardless of the substance of the charges. This is therefore not a matter of parliamentary immunity, but rather a protection attached to the office of head of government as recognized by the U.S. executive branch.
No U.S. court has concluded that Saad al-Jabri’s allegations were false. No trial has established Mohammed bin Salman’s innocence. No judge has heard all the witnesses, compared communications, or reconstructed a potential chain of command. The prince has been shielded from judicial scrutiny due to his diplomatic status, which has not been cleared by a ruling on the facts. Immunity temporarily bars access to the courtroom; it does not erase the allegations or the unanswered questions.
France Opens a New Legal Front in the Khashoggi Case
The crown prince’s legal situation is no longer limited to the United States. On May 11, 2026, the Paris Court of Appeals ruled that the complaints filed by TRIAL International and Reporters Without Borders regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi were admissible. On May 16, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office confirmed the appointment of an investigating judge tasked with investigating acts classified as torture and enforced disappearance.
The opening of this judicial investigation does not mean that Mohammed bin Salman has been formally charged or that an arrest warrant has been issued against him. However, it allows an independent judge to gather evidence, hear witnesses, and examine who is responsible for an operation carried out abroad. As reported by Reuters, this case represents a new legal front following the conclusion of the Turkish trial and the dismissal, on grounds of immunity, of the U.S. civil lawsuit.
This French investigation is politically sensitive. It is launching just as Paris is hosting Mohammed bin Salman, negotiating investments with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, and presenting Riyadh as an indispensable economic partner. It raises a simple question: Should a state’s financial power determine the extent to which the justice system can investigate crimes attributed to its agents?
Khashoggi: U.S. Findings Point to the Highest Levels of Power
Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered on October 2, 2018, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. His body was never found. Several members of the team sent to Turkey belonged to Saudi security agencies, and some were linked to the crown prince’s inner circle.
In an assessment declassified on February 26, 2021, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Mohammed bin Salman had approved an operation to capture or kill the journalist. The official document, published by the Director of National Intelligence, highlights the prince’s control over security agencies and the improbability that an operation of this magnitude could have been carried out without his authorization.
UN Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard had previously established the Saudi state’s responsibility for a premeditated extrajudicial execution and noted the existence of credible evidence warranting an investigation into the responsibility of senior leaders, including Mohammed bin Salman. He denies having ordered the murder, though he has acknowledged that it occurred “under his responsibility” as a leader. He has not been convicted of a criminal offense. But there is a fundamental difference between the absence of a conviction—achieved in a context of immunities and diplomatic power dynamics—and a genuine declaration of innocence.
Houssam Al-Assiri: New Testimony from Within
Another name came to public attention in August 2026: that of Saudi engineer Houssam Al-Assiri. In a video posted on August 31 on his X account, @eng_hossam1992, he claims to have escaped an attempt to “liquidate” him in a villa in Riyadh’s diplomatic quarter, near the embassies of the Philippines and Jordan.
Al-Assiri links this alleged attempt to the sensitive information he claims to possess, as well as to his past relationships with prominent figures and institutions within the Saudi government. He asks the authorities to examine the additional evidence he claims to be able to provide and to reconstruct his movements in Riyadh on June 22, 2026. In his subsequent posts, he states that he has preserved evidence so that others cannot, in his words, “write the story of his disappearance in his place” or “justify his death after the fact.”
To date, these statements constitute the individual’s public testimony. They are not corroborated by any independent judicial investigation that has been made public and do not allow for the attribution of personal responsibility to Mohammed bin Salman. But they call for precisely what is all too often missing in cases of this kind: an investigation, the preservation of digital data, the identification of the villa’s owners and occupants, the examination of security camera footage from the diplomatic quarter, and verification of the movements mentioned by the witness.
Taken in isolation, this account remains an allegation yet to be proven. When viewed alongside the cases of Khashoggi, al-Jabri, Omar Abdulaziz, and Ghanem al-Masarir, it underscores the urgency of investigating the methods used against those who claim to know the secrets of the Saudi regime.
Pegasus, assaults, and threats: repression beyond borders
The case of Ghanem al-Masarir sets a particularly important precedent because it resulted in a judicial ruling on the merits of the case. This Saudi dissident and videographer, who had sought refuge in the United Kingdom, claimed that two of his phones had been infected with the Pegasus spyware and that his assault in August 2018 near Harrods in London had been orchestrated to silence him.
On January 26, 2026, the British High Court concluded that there was a compelling basis for attributing the hacking and the assault to Saudi Arabia or its agents. The kingdom was ordered to pay him more than three million pounds sterling. Technical analysis had linked the infections to a Pegasus infrastructure called “Operator KINGDOM,” whose known targets all had ties to the interests of the Saudi government.
Among these targets was also Omar Abdulaziz, a dissident living in Canada and a close associate of Jamal Khashoggi. His communications were compromised while he was exchanging messages with the journalist about digital activism projects. Once again, each case has its own facts and its own level of evidence. Taken together, however, they reveal a pattern: identifying critics, mapping their relationships, infiltrating their phones, putting pressure on their families, and, in the most serious cases, planning or carrying out physical operations outside the kingdom.
Six billion euros in France: an announced project is not a completed investment
It is in this context that the announcement of six billion euros for three amusement parks in Cergy-Pontoise, near Paris, must be examined. Presented on August 24, 2026, by Emmanuel Macron and Mohammed bin Salman as an exceptional project capable of creating 22,000 jobs, the complex would be financed by Qiddiya Investment Company, a subsidiary of the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
But these spectacular figures should not be confused with money actually invested. As of September 2026, the project remained in the preliminary stages. No official timeline had been published, administrative and environmental permits had not been secured, and Qiddiya did not even yet hold the rights to operate the Dragon Ball theme area planned for one of the parks. A major public debate was not scheduled to take place until the following year. According to an investigation by Le Monde, the project could take eight to ten years to be completed, if at all.
It is therefore impossible to say today that six billion euros will actually be injected into the French economy. The announcement constitutes a political promise and a project to be studied, not a check deposited into the public accounts. The 22,000 jobs announced are also a projection that will depend on final financing, commercial licenses, transportation infrastructure, land acquisition procedures, environmental decisions, and the evolution of diplomatic relations.
For Emmanuel Macron, whose second term will end in 2027 and who, under the Constitution, cannot immediately run for a third consecutive term, this announcement reinforces a narrative of economic power and international appeal. For Mohammed bin Salman, it offers a prestigious European stage to replace the images of the Istanbul consulate with those of major projects, jobs, and entertainment. The interests of the two presidencies thus converge in a communication strategy whose tangible results remain to be seen.
The PIF: An Economic Instrument and a Tool for Political Rehabilitation
The Public Investment Fund is no ordinary investor. It is chaired by Mohammed bin Salman and lies at the heart of Vision 2030, the program designed to prepare for the post-oil era. Its international investments also serve as a foreign policy instrument and a means of legitimizing the prince.
Human Rights Watch believes that the fund’s investments are used to secure less critical foreign support and to deflect attention from human rights violations. The PIF has also been linked to the Khashoggi case through Sky Prime Aviation, two of whose planes transported members of the Saudi team involved in the assassination to Istanbul. Le Monde’s report on the fund’s influence also highlights its economic ties to the LIV Golf circuit and to Affinity Partners, Jared Kushner’s fund, which received approximately $2 billion from the PIF.
This strategy is often referred to as sportswashing or reputation washing. It involves shifting the focus: from the prisoner to the stadium, from the dissident under surveillance to the amusement park, from Khashoggi to the contracts, from executions to conferences on tolerance. The goal is not only to make money, but to make any criticism of the regime politically costly.
Vision 2030: Real Results, but Also a Severe Financial Constraint
To portray Saudi Arabia as a state without money or as an economy that has already collapsed would be an exaggeration. In July 2026, the International Monetary Fund reported 4.6% growth in 2025, inflation below 2%, comfortable foreign exchange reserves, and a banking sector that still has solid financial buffers. Riyadh retains considerable resources.
But this financial power is not unlimited. The kingdom remains heavily dependent on oil, while simultaneously funding Neom, the 2030 World’s Fair, the 2034 World Cup, tourism infrastructure, and a multitude of prestige projects. The PIF’s net profit plummeted by 60% in 2024. The fund had to record an impairment charge of approximately $8 billion on several megaprojects, largely due to cost overruns, delays, and a scaling back of initial ambitions. Neom and other programs have been scaled back, postponed, or reconfigured.
Vision 2030 has not, therefore, collapsed, but it is facing a harsh reality check regarding budgetary constraints. In this context, any promise of six billion euros in Europe must be evaluated based on final contracts, financial guarantees, the payment schedule, and the actual start of construction—not based on a press conference.
Mohammed al-Issa in Belgium: The Diplomacy of Religious Respectability
The announced visit to Belgium on October 2, 2026, by Mohammed bin Abdelkarim al-Issa represents the other side of this strategy of influence. A former Saudi Minister of Justice from 2009 to 2015, he has headed the Muslim World League since 2016. His itinerary includes a reception with Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot.
Al-Issa now presents himself as a champion of interfaith dialogue, moderation, and coexistence. Notably, he led a Muslim delegation to Auschwitz and has held numerous meetings with Western religious and political leaders. This evolution is worth noting. But it cannot erase his institutional past at the head of the Saudi Ministry of Justice.
The calendar years spanning his tenure were marked by hundreds of executions, convictions handed down following proceedings denounced as unfair, corporal punishment, and the persecution of opponents and human rights defenders. The issue is not to claim that a Minister of Justice personally handed down every sentence or wielded the executioner’s sword. Rather, it is to ask what political and institutional role he played in a judicial system whose practices were already widely criticized.
Moreover, the situation has not improved under Mohammed bin Salman. Amnesty International documented at least 345 executions in 2024, followed by 356 in 2025—a new record. People were executed for nonviolent drug-related offenses, and at least two men were executed for crimes they were accused of committing while they were minors. Amnesty’s global report on the death penalty directly contradicts the official narrative of a monarchy that claims to have limited capital punishment to the most serious crimes.
Hosting Mohammed al‑Issa is therefore not a neutral diplomatic gesture. A democracy can engage in dialogue with a Saudi representative, but it must do so publicly, raising the sensitive issues: How many condemned prisoners were executed after trials lacking adequate safeguards? What real access to legal counsel was provided? What recourse is available against confessions obtained under duress? Why are human rights defenders still imprisoned? Why is the number of executions reaching record highs at the very moment the kingdom is funding international campaigns on tolerance?
Belgium and Europe must choose between diplomacy and complacency
At the same time, Belgium is preparing a major economic mission to Saudi Arabia. This convergence of religious diplomacy, economic exchanges, and political rapprochement shows that Riyadh is not merely seeking trade partners: the kingdom is building a framework of influence capable of transforming contracts, investments, cultural events, and interfaith meetings into instruments of normalization.
The issue is not to refuse all dialogue with Saudi Arabia. It is to determine the conditions of that dialogue. Hosting representatives of an authoritarian regime without publicly addressing executions, political prisoners, the spying on dissidents, and foreign judicial proceedings amounts to granting respectability without any quid pro quo. Official photographs then become a form of diplomatic currency that Riyadh can use to show its people and the world that Western democracies have definitively turned the page on Khashoggi.
A credible foreign policy, on the contrary, should demand answers: cooperation with the French investigating judge, transparency regarding Khashoggi’s murder, protection for Saad al-Jabri’s children, an independent investigation into Houssam Al-Assiri’s statements, an end to the illegal surveillance of opponents, the publication of court rulings, and a moratorium on executions.
A Prince Who Is Protected, but Increasingly Beset by Legal Cases
Mohammed bin Salman is not currently facing charges in any international criminal court. He still benefits from the protections afforded by his position, the kingdom’s financial power, and the strategic importance of Saudi oil. But he now faces several overlapping legal jurisdictions: the al-Jabri case in the United States, the French investigation into Khashoggi, the civil judgment against the kingdom in the al-Masarir case, and the technical investigations into the use of Pegasus against dissidents.
Not all of these cases prove the same facts, nor do they all carry the same legal weight. Some are based on final rulings, others on intelligence assessments, digital forensics, or testimony that has yet to be corroborated. Together, however, they paint a coherent picture: that of a power structure that tolerates neither troublesome witnesses, nor independent critics, nor former servants who have become uncontrollable.
Money can buy airplanes, sports clubs, competitions, amusement parks, and public relations campaigns. It can secure audiences, official smiles, and sometimes the silence of allies. It does not transform immunity into innocence, nor does it make legal cases disappear.
The true test for France, Belgium, and their European partners will not be the number of billions announced. It will be their ability to host Saudi leaders without shying away from publicly asking the questions that Riyadh still refuses to answer.
