Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Greece Tuesday on his first trip to a European Union country since the killing in 2018 of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi that triggered widespread international condemnation. Bin Salman, who is traveling with a large government and business delegation, met with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and will attend the signing of a series of bilateral investment and defense agreements. Khashoggi, a U.S.-based journalist, was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and his body was dismembered with a bone saw, according to Turkish officials. A U.S. intelligence report, made public last year, said the crown prince likely approved the killing but he has denied any involvement. Greece has forged close ties with Saudi Arabia in recent years as it seeks allies in the wider region to address long-standing tension with neighbor Turkey, mostly over sea boundaries and drilling rights. Last year, Greece and Saudi Arabia held joint military exercises out of the Greek island of Crete, and Athens lent the kingdom a missile battery from its Patriot air defense system. The two countries are also planning a data cable link worth a reported 800 million euros that would run under the Mediterranean Sea and be completed in 2025. Read: Jamal Khashoggi killing: Rights group files complaint against Saudi crown prince The Saudi Prince’s trip to Greece follows his meeting earlier with month in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with President Joe Biden. Mitsotakis visited Saudi Arabia last October and met the crown prince who also later received visits from French President Emmanuel Macron and the outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

A Turkish court ruled Thursday to suspend the trial in absentia of 26 Saudis accused in the gruesome killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and for the case to be transferred to Saudi Arabia. Kaghoggi, a United States resident who wrote critically about Saudi Crown Prince Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed on Oct. 2, 2018, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. He had gone into the consulate for an appointment to collect documents required for him to marry his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. He never emerged from the building. Turkish officials alleged that Khashoggi was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw inside the consulate by a team of Saudi agents sent to Istanbul. The group included a forensic doctor, intelligence and security officers and individuals who worked for the crown prince’s office. His remains have not been found. The Istanbul court's decision comes despite warnings from human rights groups that turning the case over to the kingdom would lead to a cover up of the killing, which has cast suspicion on the crown prince. Also read: Saudi suspect in Khashoggi killing arrested in France It also comes as Turkey, which is in the throes of a deep economic downturn, has been trying to repair its troubled relationship with Saudi Arabia and an array of other countries in its region. Some media reports have claimed that Riyadh has made improved relations conditional on Turkey dropping the case, which had inflamed tensions between two countries. The move would pave the way to a resolution of disputes between the two regional heavyweights since the 2011 Arab Spring, including Turkey’s support for Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, which Riyadh considers a terrorist group. Turkey also sided with Qatar in a diplomatic dispute that saw Doha boycotted by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Last week, the prosecutor in the case recommended that it be transferred to the kingdom, arguing that the trial in Turkey would remain inconclusive. Turkey’s justice minister supported the recommendation, adding that the trial in Turkey would resume if the Turkish court is not satisfied with the outcome of proceedings in the kingdom. It was not clear, however, if Saudi Arabia, which has already put some of the defendants on trial behind closed doors, would open a new trial. During Thursday's hearing, lawyers representing Cengiz asked the court not to move proceedings to Saudi Arabia, the private DHA news agency reported. “Let’s not entrust the lamb to the wolf,” the agency quoted lawyer Ali Ceylan as telling the court, using a Turkish saying. “Let’s protect the honor and dignity of the Turkish nation.” The court however, ruled to halt the trial in line with the Justice Ministry's “positive opinion,” DHA reported. It also decided to lift arrest warrants issued against the defendants and gave the sides seven days in which to lodge any opposition to the court’s decisions. Human rights advocates had also urged Turkey not to transfer the case to Saudi Arabia, arguing that justice for Khashoggi would not be delivered by Saudi courts. “It's a scandalous decision,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, the Turkey director for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, asserting that the court had "rubber stamped" a political decision that would allow the government to repair its ties with Saudi Arabia. “In the interest of realpolitik, Turkey is ready to sacrifice justice for an egregious crime on its own soil,” she told The Associated Press. “(The decision) opens the way for other countries to commit assassinations on Turkish territory and get away with it.” Cengiz said she would continue to seek justice. Also read:Jamal Khashoggi killing: Rights group files complaint against Saudi crown prince “We will continue this (judicial) process with all the power given to me, as a Turkish citizen,” she told reporters outside the courthouse. “The two countries may be making an agreement, the two countries may be opening a new chapter ... but the crime is still the same crime,” she said. “The people who committed the crime haven't changed. Governments and states must have a principled stance.” At the time of the crime, Turkey apparently had the Saudi Consulate bugged and shared audio of the killing with the CIA, among others. The slaying sparked international outrage and condemnation. Western intelligence agencies, as well as the U.S. Congress, have said that an operation of such magnitude could not have happened without knowledge of the prince. Turkey, which had vowed to shed light on the brutal killing, began prosecuting the defendants in absentia in 2020 after Saudi Arabia rejected requests for their extradition. The defendants included two former aides of the prince. Some of the men were put on trial in Riyadh behind closed doors. A Saudi court issued a final verdict in 2020 that sentenced five mid-level officials and operatives to 20-year jail terms. The court had originally ordered the death penalty, but reduced the punishment after Khashoggi’s son Salah, who lives in Saudi Arabia, announced that he forgave the defendants. Three others were sentenced to lesser jail terms.

A suspect in the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was arrested Tuesday in France, according to a French judicial official. The official said the suspect was being held on the basis of a Turkish arrest warrant. He requested not being named in accordance with the French justice system’s customary practices. French radio RTL said the Saudi national, Khalid Aedh al-Otaibi, was arrested at the Roissy airport near Paris as he was trying to board a flight to Riyadh. Al-Otaibi was one of over a dozen Saudi officials sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2018 over Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. He was also mentioned in the declassified U.S. intelligence report that said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had “approved” the operation that killed Khashoggi. The report used an alternate English transliteration of his last name. The Saudi Embassy in Paris said the arrested man “had nothing to do with the case in question,” and said the embassy expects his immediate release. It noted that Saudi Arabia already held a trial over the killing, though it was behind closed doors and the verdicts were criticized by rights groups and others for not holding to account or finding guilty anyone responsible behind organizing , ordering or overseeing the operation that killed Khashoggi. Read: Jamal Khashoggi killing: Rights group files complaint against Saudi crown prince French authorities were on Tuesday evening verifying the suspect’s identity. The director of media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Christophe Deloire, welcomed the news. “Sometimes governments close their eyes about people who are pursued by justice in another country. I note with satisfaction that there was an arrest, and the police didn’t close their eyes this time,” he told The Associated Press. Al-Otaibi “is someone we have been following for a long time,” Deloire said. RSF has lobbied multiple governments to seek justice for Khashoggi’s killing, and filed a lawsuit in Germany for crimes against humanity over the case. There was no immediate comment from Turkey over the arrest. French media report the suspect is going to be notified about the arrest warrant by a prosecutor on Wednesday. He can accept or refuse to be transferred to Turkey. If he refuses, a judge will decide whether he remains in custody pending the review of the case and a possible extradition process, which could take months. The arrest comes as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman continues his first regional Gulf tour since the killing. He traveled Tuesday from Oman to the United Arab Emirates. The prince met with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday in Saudi Arabia. Macron said they notably had talks about human right issues. Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi, said in a statement the arrest of the suspect, if confirmed, is “a very significant first step for justice for Jamal...Justice must be allowed to take its proper course... Most importantly, those who executed the plan must not be used to shield those much higher up who gave the order for Jamal’s brutal killing, including the Crown Prince himself. They must also be arrested and prosecuted.” “If this is all true, this is the first step that should continue until justice is served and until the person who ordered the killing also faces justice,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, director of Gulf issues at DAWN, a U.S.-based organization envisioned by Khashoggi before his murder to support democracy and rule of law in the Arab world. Alaoudh’s own father, well-known Islamic scholar Salman Aloudah, is among those detained in the kingdom since 2017 under the crown prince. He was arrested shortly after a tweet perceived as not supportive of the Saudi embargo against neighboring Qatar at the time— a spat that has since ended. Read: Biden-Putin square off for 2 hours as Ukraine tensions mount The arrest comes as the crown prince works to move away from the stain on his reputation internationally and woo back big name Western investors and celebrities. Human rights activists have urged celebrities and sports stars to boycott events in Saudi Arabia, arguing they serve to distract from the country’s crackdown on critics and that such events happen only with approval of the crown prince. Just this week alone, the kingdom hosted its first ever Formula One race with pop star Justin Bieber performing despite Khashoggi’s fiancée plea for him to not participate in protest. Meanwhile, stars like Hillary Swank and Catherine Deneuve were photographed on the red carpet Monday for the kingdom’s inaugural Red Sea International Film Festival in Jiddah. Last year, Turkey began trying 26 Saudi nationals in absentia over Khashoggi’s murder after Saudi Arabia refused to extradite them and after Turkish officials dismissed a trial against some of the suspects that was conducted behind closed doors in Riyadh. In the last hearing in November however, the court in Istanbul requested that the Ministry of Justice contact authorities in Saudi Arabia to determine whether they had been sentenced there to avoid them from being tried over the same offense. The arrest in Paris comes as Turkey has been trying to improve its frayed relations with the Kingdom and other Arab nations at a time when its economy is faltering. Khashoggi was killed on October 2, 2018, after he entered the consulate to get documents that would allow him to marry his Turkish fiancee, who was waiting outside. Turkish officials allege Khashoggi, who had written critically about Saudi Arabia’s crown prince for The Washington Post, was killed by a team of Saudi agents and then dismembered with a bone saw. The Saudi government admitted to the murder under intense international pressure. The Saudi court proceedings, which were open to select Western diplomats to sit in on, were not open to independent media to observe. Khashoggi’s family subsequently announced they had forgiven his killers.

A Saudi court issued final verdicts on Monday in the case of slain Washington Post columnist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi after his son, who still resides in the kingdom, announced pardons that spared five of the convicted individuals from execution.