Rights Group Sues Saudi Crown Prince in France over Massacring Yemeni People

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, Reuters reported.
 
Saudi Arabia, in alliance with the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan and Kuwait, has been bombing Yemen since 27 March 2015, in a bid to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.
 
The case was filed in a Paris court as pressure grows on President Emmanuel Macron to curb arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE that are leading the anti-Yemen aggression.
 
Over 14,000 Yemenis have been killed and tens of thousands injured in Saudi-led strikes, with the vast majority of them being civilians, especially women and children.
 
“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 oil-rich 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.
 
Authorities will now begin studying the suit and decide whether there is a basis to take further legal action. If the case follows the usual course, the prince would be informed of the legal action, but there would be no move to make him attend a hearing or detain him.
 
The complaint also accuses the coalition of depriving millions of people of access to basic necessities due to indiscriminate bombings and a naval blockade of Yemeni ports. The war has pushed the country to the brink of famine.
 
The lawyers said French courts were competent to handle the case in line with the United Nations convention against torture.
 
Seventy-five percent of French people want Macron to suspend arms exports to Gulf Arab states. Several rights groups have warned of possible legal action if the government does not halt its sales.