https://arab.news/w3z9y

RIYADH: The arrival of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in France on a state visit continues a tradition of frequent high-level exchanges between the two friendly countries.

The strength of the political ties and strategic partnership between France and Saudi Arabia is evident in the large number of visits undertaken by their leaders and officials in recent years.

Since 2017, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has visited France once. During the same period, France’s foreign minister has visited Saudi Arabia three times, while French President Emmanuel Macron has visited the Kingdom once.

The last official diplomatic visit occurred in December 2021, when President Macron met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah as part of a tour of Gulf countries. 

Formal relations between France and the Arabian Peninsula can be traced back to 1839, when the former opened a consulate in Jeddah — its first diplomatic post in the region.

Prince Faisal bin Abdulaziz, the future king of Saudi Arabia, was the first member of the royal family to pay an official visit to France in 1919. Full diplomatic relations began when France recognized the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd, the forerunner to the unified Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, established in 1932.

In his role as foreign minister, Prince Faisal again visited Paris after France became one of the first countries to recognize the kingdom.

In 1967, King Faisal visited French President Charles de Gaulle in Paris — his first state visit as ruler of the Kingdom. Since then, the relationship between the two countries has flourished and become closer than ever.

Numerous agreements have been signed between them, from military assistance and advanced technology to economy and cultural cooperation.

The Kingdom’s relations with France are built on the common interests of “preserving security in a troubled region, a common commitment to combating terrorism, and a convergence of views on regional crises,” according to the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs’s website.

Saudi Arabia and France have robust business ties, as shown both by the economic history and total trade volume between the two. In 2021, France imported $3.8 billion worth of Saudi goods, while it exported $3.23 billion to the Kingdom, according to the UN’s Comtrade international trade database.

Banque Saudi Fransi is a Saudi joint stock company established by a Saudi royal decree in 1977, and is associated with the French Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank. The bank now boasts more than 100 branches across the Kingdom and more internationally.

The Saudi-French Business Council, established in 2003, has held dozens of sessions to discuss bilateral trade and investment.

The two countries have not just engaged in economic relations with one another, but have come together to assist other nations by providing joint economic relief.

In April this year, Saudi Arabia and France announced a joint development fund to provide $76 million for the development of food safety, health, education, energy, water, and internal security forces in crisis-stricken Lebanon.

Perhaps no sector of Saudi-French relations is sturdier or more readily observed than that of joint cultural and artistic ventures. In 2018, Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan, Saudi Arabia’s minister of culture, and Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, signed an intergovernmental agreement to collaborate on the development of the cultural and tourism destination AlUla.

Since this agreement, France and Saudi Arabia have worked closely and intensely on AlUla’s development. Also in 2018, the Royal Commission for AlUla signed an agreement with Campus France to train 68 Saudi hospitality employees to work at AlUla, and the next year, it was announced that the site would be home to a luxury resort designed by award-winning French architect Jean Nouvel.

Ludovic Pouille, the current French ambassador to the Kingdom, spoke to Arab News earlier this month about the continuing cultural cooperation.

“In 2002, the very first Franco-Saudi archaeological excavation, led by the French archaeologist Laila Nehme, was launched in Mada’in Saleh,” he told Arab News.

“This year we celebrate the 20th anniversary of this cooperation, which has expanded with no less than 16 Franco-Saudi archaeological missions in the Kingdom.”

He noted that several agreements had been signed in recent years to open training centers for Saudi youth in collaboration with the French Football Federation.

This year in May, the Saudi-French Business Council hosted a high-level French delegation representing the entertainment sector to discuss potential French investment in the Kingdom’s flourishing entertainment industry.

Campus France’s initiative is far from the only joint educational venture between France and the Kingdom. In 2021, at a dinner in Riyadh, Bertrand Besancenot, the then-French ambassador to Saudi Arabia, stated that 1,500 Saudi students were studying at French universities, and that many of these universities signed agreements aiming to boost the number of Saudi students in the country.

The two states, both G20 members, also have clear visions for progress and modernization. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched Saudi Vision 2030 in 2016, while France launched its own French Vision 2030 a few months ago. The goals of both plans include energy transition to renewables, digital transitions, and sustained economic growth.

France has long stood in solidarity with the Kingdom in the face of military and militant attacks on Saudi Arabia. In December 1979, France sent advisers from its elite GIGN special police and trained members of the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate who ended the siege of the Grand Mosque in Makkah by armed fanatics.

In March this year, France condemned attacks carried out on Saudi territory by the Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthi militia.

France is also a major provider of defense equipment and technologies to Saudi Arabia, a relationship underscored by the $12 billion in deals signed between the two countries in 2015.

In 2019, Saudi Arabian Military Industries announced at a military exhibition in Abu Dhabi that the Kingdom had signed an agreement with France’s Naval Group to build warships in Saudi Arabia. Two years later, SAMI announced joint investments with the French Airbus and Figeac Aero companies.

Against this background, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to France is expected to cement ties in all areas of the two countries’ diplomatic relations.

The French Revolution of 1789 saw France transform from a monarchy to a republic, which came under the control of Napoleon Bonaparte 10 years later.

After he became emperor of the First French Empire from 1804-1814, his armies conquered large swaths of continental Europe. Another monarchy emerged from the wake of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, and Napoleon’s nephew created the Second Empire in 1852, becoming the last monarch to rule over France.

He was ousted and the monarchy was replaced by the Third French Republic in 1870. Throughout the 19th century and early 20th century, France maintained a large colonial empire across West Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

France sided with the Allied Powers during the Second World War, but was split in two during the conflict, with most of the country controlled by a collaborationist, pro-German government.

The country slowly recovered after the end of the war, but long wars in its colonies in Indochina (now Vietnam) and Algeria saw it ousted from these regions, and by the 1960s, most of France’s former colonies had achieved independence.

France has been a full member of the UN Security Council and NATO since the end of the Second World War, and played a vital role in the establishment of the EU. France has a large Muslim and Arab population owing to its former colonies in north Africa, and many of these populations suffer from social alienation and high unemployment rates.

The country has been the site of unrest and protests against the enforcement of strict secular policies and controversial bills, some of which have attempted to ban the wearing of headscarves or traditional Muslim face coverings in public.

LONDON: Coleen Rooney, wife of former England soccer captain Wayne, emerged victorious in her high-profile libel match with the spouse of an ex-teammate after a High Court judge agreed that Rebekah Vardy had leaked stories about her to the press. In a case that has gripped the public with its mix of glamor, soccer, and amateur sleuthing, the judge backed Rooney’s public assertion that Vardy had spilled private details about her to the Sun tabloid, leaving Vardy “devastated.” The intrigue began almost three years ago when Rooney grew suspicious about stories in the Sun and turned detective to try to find the culprit. She said she blocked everyone from viewing her Instagram account except one person and then posted a series of false stories to see whether they leaked out, which they did. Rooney wrote on her social media accounts that only one person had viewed the false stories, concluding with the dramatic revelation: “It’s ... Rebekah Vardy’s account.” Vardy, 40, sued Rooney and the feud was dubbed the “WAGatha Christie” case after the “WAG” moniker given to a group of footballers’ wives and girlfriends, and the renowned author of detective novels in honor of Rooney’s sleuthing. The judge, Justice Karen Steyn, said Rooney proved her allegation was “substantially true.” She concluded that Vardy knew and condoned details being leaked to the Sun by her agent Caroline Watt. “It was not a case I ever sought or wanted,” Rooney said in a statement. “I never believed it should have gone to court at such expense ... when the money could have been far better spent helping others,” she added. Any decision over who foots the legal fees will be settled at a future hearing. British media have speculated the trial cost millions of pounds. “Although I bear Mrs.Vardy no ill-will, today’s judgment makes clear that I was right in what I said in my posts of October 2019,” Rooney said. Vardy said she was “extremely sad and disappointed at the decision.” “It is not the result that I had expected, nor believe was just. I brought this action to vindicate my reputation and am devastated by the judge’s finding,” she said in a statement. “(The judge) got it wrong and this is something I cannot accept.”

BOTTOM OF THE SEA During the trial in May, the court was shown message exchanges between Vardy and Watt, which included derogatory remarks about Rooney and talk of leaking stories. Rooney’s lawyer said Vardy deleted other media files and messages. Watt’s phone ended up at the bottom of the North Sea after she said she accidentally dropped it over the side of a boat. “It is likely that Ms Vardy deliberately deleted her WhatsApp chat with Ms Watt, and that Ms Watt deliberately dropped her phone in the sea,” Steyn said. The judge found Rooney to be honest but said some of Vardy’s testimony was not credible and there had been “a degree of self-deception on her part regarding the extent to which she was involved.” The courtroom bust-up has attracted similar level of public attention to any of their husbands’ soccer games. Wayne Rooney holds the record for the most international goals for England, while Vardy’s husband Jamie has been one of the top scorers in the English Premier League in recent years, also playing and scoring for the national side. Both women are well-known in their own right — Coleen Rooney, 36, has 1.2 million followers on Twitter and almost 925,000 on Instagram — and the libel case lifted the lid on their glittering lifestyles, and less flattering aspects such as the Rooneys’ marriage troubles. Vardy says her family had received abuse and threats as a result of Rooney’s public accusation and Steyn agreed it was not in the public interest for the disclosure to have been made by Rooney without giving Vardy the chance to respond first. “Some members of the public have responded to the Reveal Post by subjecting Ms Vardy to vile abuse, including messages wishing her, her family, and even her (then unborn) baby, ill in the most awful terms,” Steyn said. “Nothing of which Ms Vardy has been accused, nor any of the findings in this judgment, provide any justification or excuse for subjecting her or her family, or any other person involved in this case, to such vitriol.”

ADDIS ABABA: Regional forces in southeast Ethiopia killed more than 150 Al-Shabab militiamen during fierce border clashes on Friday, the state news agency and a regional commander said, in the third round of fighting in nine days. The attacks add to the already complex security landscape in Ethiopia, where the central government is trying to put down an insurgency and calm paramilitary groups in two different regions, while starting peace negotiations in a third. “The terrorist group regrouped its scattered forces (last night) and tried to infiltrate into Ethiopia and carry out (an) attack in the area bordering Somalia with Ethiopia,” Tesfaye Ayalew, an Ethiopian army general told the state news agency ENA. Al Shabab have long sought to establish a base in Ethiopia and have, in recent years, broadcast messages in Afaan Oromo, a language spoken in Ethiopia. Al Shabab confirmed the fighting, claiming they had killed 103 Ethiopian police and occupied the town of Aato earlier on Friday. A commander with Ethiopia’s Somali regional forces rejected that death toll, saying only 14 regional Ethiopian fighters were killed. “It’s still in our control, it’s not a question,” the commander told Reuters, referring to Aato. A resident of Aato town who asked not to be identified said Al-Shabab attacked the town with car bombs and mortar shells in the morning but later fled. The commander said federal Ethiopian forces carried out several air strikes, hitting four Al-Shabab vehicles near the villages of Garasley and Lagalaay on the Somali side of the border, killing an unknown number of militants. An Al-Shabab leader had been killed in a mortar attack, he added. Al Shabab controls large swathes of Somalia and has killed tens of thousands of people in bombings in its fight to overthrow the Western-backed central government there and impose its own interpretation of Islamic law.

ISLAMABAD: A grenade exploded on Friday during a cricket game in Kabul, wounding 13 spectators at the stadium, an emergency hospital in the Afghan capital said. The Italian-run Emergency Hospital in Kabul said on Twitter that 12 of the wounded were hospitalized while one other patient was treated and discharged. No one claimed responsibility for the explosion at the International Cricket Stadium in Kabul, where several hundred people had gathered to watch the match between Band-e-Amir Dragons and Pamir Zalmi. The afternoon game was part of the domestic T20 Shpageza Cricket league games held every year. Cricket is a hugely popular sport in Afghanistan. The Taliban-appointed Kabul police spokesman, Khalid Zadran, said the game was briefly halted due to the grenade explosion but later continued. “The match was going on between two teams in Shpageza League, and during the match a blast happened,” said Nassib Khan, chief executive of Afghanistan Cricket Board. Lately, the Daesh group’s regional affiliate, known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, has claimed attacks in Kabul and other parts of the country. The IS affiliate, which has been operating in Afghanistan since 2014, is seen as the greatest security challenge facing the country’s new Taliban rulers. Following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last August, the former insurgents have launched sweeping crackdowns against IS, which has a foothold in eastern Nangarhar province. Ramiz Alakbarov, the deputy at the UN mission in Afghanistan, condemned Friday’s attack in a statement. He was at the stadium at the time of the attack and was to address the Afghan cricket association. Alakbarov could not confirm if there were any fatalities at the stadium but wished the injured a speedy recovery. “Today’s blast is yet another harrowing reminder of the terrifying and sudden violence that the population in Afghanistan continues to be exposed to,” he said. “Sports bring people hope, inspire children and generations alike, play a crucial role in breaking down barriers and bringing communities together.” Thomas West, the US special representative for Afghanistan, said he was deeply saddened by reports of the explosion Friday during a cricket match in Kabul. “Violence serves no purpose and is not the answer for the people of Afghanistan,” said West, who succeeded Zalmay Khalilzad in the post.

MADRID: The Madrid City Council last week approved the use of land in the Spanish capital for Muslim burial spaces.

Maysoun Douas, the first and only Muslim councillor on the City Council for Mas Madrid, made a speech to highlight the problems and lack of rights faced by the Muslim community in the region.

Religious freedom includes the right to receive a dignified burial without discrimination on religious grounds, she said.

However, there is currently only one Muslim cemetery in the Autonomous Community of Madrid, in Grinon, 40 km from the center of Madrid.

In 2016, it was already full and did not even allow burials according to the Islamic rite, because municipal ordinances require the use of coffins.

The space was historically designated for Franco’s “Guardia Mora” during the Francoist dictatorship.

The Autonomous Community of Madrid has about 250 public cemeteries, 14 of which are municipal in the city of Madrid.

Of all of them, only the one in Grinon is Muslim, for about 300,000 people in the community and 100,000 in the capital who practice Islam.

All this comes under civil rights for Muslim citizens, which have been stigmatized according to Douas. 

“The official interlocutors for religious issues, organizations we trusted, convinced us that we were fighting for our rights when they were actually hijacking them,” she said.

“This is a group that needs real institutional support, as organizations have done little or nothing to implement basic rights recognized for other citizens,” she added.

After decades of stagnation and paralysis of progress, only political participation and the occupation of spaces by new voices opens the way to achieve basic rights, such as the ability to bury family members under the same umbrella of rights as any other citizen, no matter what religion they profess, she said.

LONDON: A British man convicted of helping people travel to join Daesh and accused of “grooming” the Manchester Arena bomber could soon be released from jail.

Abdalraouf Abdallah, 29, could be up for parole in November. He was jailed for nine-and-a-half years in 2016 for facilitating travel for people to fight in the civil war in Syria, and of raising money to support their efforts.

He was paralyzed from the waist down while fighting in the Libyan revolution of 2011, and was arrested in 2014 in the UK for suspected terrorist activities — charges he continues to deny.

At his trial in London it was revealed that correspondence was found on his mobile phone with the Manchester Arena bomber, Salman Abedi, in which the two discussed, among other things, martyrdom and the death of a member of Al-Qaeda.

Abdallah was released on license in November 2020, but was recalled to prison soon after for breaching his behavior-related conditions.

His prospective re-release comes after a change in the law in February 2020, mandating that criminals with convictions for terrorism offenses must serve two-thirds of their sentence in jail before review by the Parole Board.

In the UK, convicted criminals typically only serve half of a given custodial sentence dependent on circumstances before parole considerations.

A Parole Board spokesperson said: “We can confirm the parole review of Abdalraouf Abdallah has been referred to the Parole Board by the secretary of state for justice and is following standard processes.

“Parole Board decisions are solely focused on what risk a prisoner could represent to the public if released and whether that risk is manageable in the community,” the spokesperson said.

“A panel will carefully examine a huge range of evidence, including details of the original crime, and any evidence of behavior change, as well as explore the harm done and impact the crime has had on the victims.

“Evidence from witnesses such as probation officers, psychiatrists and psychologists, officials supervising the offender in prison as well as victim personal statements may be given at the hearing.

“It is standard for the prisoner and witnesses to be questioned at length during the hearing, which often lasts a full day or more. Parole reviews are undertaken thoroughly and with extreme care. Protecting the public is our number one priority.”

Abdallah’s trial heard that he arranged for the movement of people and money to Syria, all while confined to his wheelchair.

Prosecutor Max Hill, QC, accused Abdallah of being “at the center of a jihadist network facilitating foreign fighters . . . intent upon sending fighters to join groups in Syria who were committing terrorist acts in that country.”

After his conviction, Abdallah was visited in prison by Abedi, and continued to contact him via an illegal mobile phone in 2017 before the Manchester Arena bombing on May 22, which killed 23 people.

The inquiry into the bombing was told by one expert Abedi was “groomed” by Abdallah, who is from Moss Side in Manchester, claiming he converted Abedi to his “violent, Islamist, extremist world view.”

Abdallah denies involvement in the bombing. He was transferred from Wakefield Prison to give evidence at the inquiry in November 2021, where he said he was “haunted” by the attack, describing his correspondence with Abedi as “normal chitchat.”

However, Pete Weatherby, QC, representing families of the victims of the bombing, said that dialogue between the pair was “about radicalization, it was about discussing some kind of perverse death.”