An atrocity that gives the lie to Saudi reform

WHEN Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman came to power in Saudi Arabia, billed as a liberal reformer, the West had high hopes he would drag the barbaric desert kingdom into the 21st century.

Those hopes have been all but shattered by overwhelming evidence that Jamal Khashoggi, the prominent journalist and critic of Saudi offences against human rights, was tortured, dismembered and murdered at the regime’s behest.

Yesterday, the prince’s protestations of ignorance wore ever thinner, as it emerged that up to four members of the suspected hit-squad were in his entourage this year when he visited 10 Downing Street, Chequers and Buckingham Palace.

This paper is realistic enough to accept that many thousands of British jobs – and contracts worth billions of pounds – depend on our trade with the oil-rich kingdom.

We acknowledge, too, that Saudi Arabia has given us valuable intelligence about terrorists, while the fall of the House of Saud would destabilise the volatile Middle East in ways that defy imagining.

Indeed, it is a painful fact of realpolitik that if we were to choose our allies purely according to their respect for human rights, we would have few friends outside the West.

But if the evidence is borne out, Khashoggi’s murder was a crime so repulsive that it cannot pass unavenged.

After the Salisbury poisonings, Britain led a hugely successful diplomatic offensive against Vladimir Putin, in which all our major allies took part.

Given the crown prince’s seeming affront to British hospitality when he led a number of suspected killers into the heart of our national life, the Foreign Office must coordinate a similar campaign against him.

He must be taught that paying lip-service to reform is not enough.