Boris’s £14k Saudi freebie days before journalist’s murder
BORIS Johnson went on a lavish all- expenses-paid trip to Saudi Arabia just days before the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it emerged last night.
The £14,000 three-day junket – which came more than two months after he quit as Foreign Secretary – was bankrolled by the despotic kingdom’s ministry of foreign affairs. The cost included flights, hotels and dinners.
Mr Johnson flew to Jeddah on September 19 – only two weeks before the dissident journalist was killed in Istanbul on october 2 – and met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s controversial ruler.
Mr Johnson told the parliamentary authorities that he had gone on the trip for a ‘ meeting with regional figures to promote education for women and girls’.
Details of the controversial trip emerged yesterday when the updated Commons register of members’ interests was published. The register also reveals Mr Johnson received a £50,000 donation from Jon Wood, founder of controversial hedge fund SRM, to pay for his office and staffing costs since stepping down as Foreign Secretary.
Critics will accuse Mr Johnson of using his beefed-up office – larger than usual for a backbench MP – to bolster a leadership campaign.
Senior British politicians have suggested that Mr Khashoggi’s murder must have been ‘ authorised at the highest level’. But even as late as last week – long after Mr Khashoggi had been killed – Mr Johnson was praising the crown prince as a potential reformer.
News of Mr Johnson’s trip comes just days after the Mail revealed that a string of MPs had accepted hospitality from Saudi Arabia worth tens of thousands of pounds. A total of 38 MPs have received freebies from the regime over the past five years.
Last night Mr Johnson was accused of a ‘total misjudgment’ for accepting such an expensive trip despite controversy over human rights abuses in the desert kingdom. Alistair Graham, former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, told the Mail that his acceptance of the hospitality was ‘shocking’.
‘It takes away from his main job as an MP, and of course he already has his other journalistic responsito bilities which limit the time he can give to his constituents,’ he said.
‘Saudi Arabia has been involved in humanitarian crises in Yemen, and it is shocking if he is accepting freebie junkets from such a regime. Education is not a specialism of Mr Johnson so it does not sound very credible that his visit was for that purpose. We would expect much better leadership from ex-foreign secretaries.’
A source close to the MP said: ‘Mr Johnson visited Saudi Arabia discuss his long-standing campaign of improving education for women and girls. He has denounced the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and continues to believe that the UK must hold Saudi Arabia to account for this barbaric act.’
Mr Johnson’s spokesman would not say whether he travelled to Saudi Arabia in first class, or in a private jet, or which hotels he stayed in while he was there.
Mr Johnson wrote in his Daily Telegraph column last week that he had visited the country – but did not say who had paid for it.
He said he had met the crown prince, and used the visit to ask why Saudi Arabia had not expelled diplomats in the wake of the Salisbury nerve agent attack.
‘Even though the matter has been raised repeatedly then and since – indeed I raised it myself, again, during a recent visit to see the crown prince – we have got nowhere,’ he said.
The former Foreign Secretary praised Prince Mohammed, saying: ‘It is still true that the crown prince has the potential to reform his country – the custodian of the two holiest shrines of Islam – in a way that could be of huge benefit to the Muslim world.’ Mr Johnson used his article to urge Saudi Arabia to come clean over the ‘sick’ and ‘bizarre’ murder of Mr Khashoggi, despite the importance of Britain’s ‘crucial commercial and security partnerships with Saudi Arabia’.
‘The UK and the US must lead other countries in holding Saudi Arabia properly to account,’ he said. ‘The body must be produced. The audio tape of the killing said to be held by the Turkish authorities – if it exists – should be made public. There can be no suggestion of a stitch-up, or of denying justice to Mr Khashoggi and his family out of deference to Saudi sensibilities.’
Last night Kate Allen, from Amnesty International UK, said: ‘Boris Johnson’s trip was right in the middle of a vicious human rights crackdown in Saudi Arabia.
‘Mr Johnson’s support for women and girls’ education in the Middle East is welcome, but he and others must speak out publicly about how Saudi Arabia systematically denies women their basic human rights. Mr Johnson has lavished praise on the Saudi crown prince as a supposed reformer, which is a total misjudgment.’
‘It is a total misjudgment’