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A French investigative magistrate has been appointed to probe the 2018 assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, AFP reported Saturday, after a Paris appeals court ruled human rights complaints admissible.
France's National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office confirmed to AFP on Saturday: "An investigating judge from the crimes against humanity unit will now investigate the complaint for torture and enforced disappearances."
The appointment followed a May 11 Paris Court of Appeal ruling that deemed complaints filed by Trial International and Reporters Without Borders admissible.
"A separate complaint filed by Khashoggi's employer Democracy for the Arab World Now was ruled inadmissible," the prosecutor's office said.
The complaints had been filed during Mohammed bin Salman's visit to France in July 2022 and were initially opposed by the prosecutor's office on admissibility grounds.
The May 11 appeals court ruling overturned that position.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) lawyer Emmanuel Daoud said: "The crime of which Jamal Khashoggi was a victim is an abominable crime, decided and planned at the highest level of the Saudi state, which had a journalist executed who was a dissident and independent voice."
Trial International's lawyer Henri Thulliez said there "should no longer be any obstacle to opening a judicial investigation into the atrocious crime committed against Jamal Khashoggi."
Khashoggi, a Washington Post (WP) columnist and prominent critic of the Saudi government, was strangled and dismembered by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 in an operation that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The crown prince has denied ordering the killing but acknowledged it occurred "under my watch."
A Turkish court halted its own trial of 26 Saudi suspects in 2022 and transferred the case to Saudi Arabia.
In the United States, the former Biden administration granted bin Salman immunity after his appointment as prime minister, causing a federal court to dismiss a civil lawsuit brought by Khashoggi's fiancée.
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