France has opened a formal judicial investigation into the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, targeting the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, on charges of torture and enforced disappearance. The decision, announced by the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office in Paris, follows a ruling by the Paris Court of Appeal that overruled earlier objections from the prosecution. The case, brought by the rights groups TRIAL International and Reporters Without Borders, marks the first time a Western judicial authority has directly examined the crown prince’s alleged role in the 2018 killing.

Viewed from Paris, the investigation rests on France’s expansive extraterritorial jurisdiction over serious crimes. The court accepted the complaints after determining that Khashoggi – a resident of the United States and a contributor to The Washington Post – had no effective access to justice elsewhere. Notably, it rejected a parallel complaint from the organisation Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), with which Khashoggi had been associated, without public explanation. The same court had previously dismissed a similar case in 2022, but this time the appeals bench ruled that the rights groups had legal standing to sue. The probe will be led by an investigating magistrate, a step that allows for possible witness summons and requests for mutual legal assistance from Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

From Washington and Ankara, the development reopens a diplomatic wound that Western capitals had sought to suture for commercial and security reasons. American intelligence agencies have long assessed that the crown prince approved the operation that ended Khashoggi’s life inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul – a conclusion the White House has intermittently embraced and fudged. Turkish prosecutors have stated that Khashoggi was strangled and dismembered within minutes of entering the building; his body has never been found. Riyadh continues to characterise the killing as a rogue operation by low-level operatives, a narrative that five death sentences handed down by a Saudi court in 2019 were designed to address, but which few independent observers accept as credible.

Analysts in London and Brussels note that the French investigation, while symbolically powerful, faces formidable obstacles. Prince Mohammed enjoys sovereign immunity under international law for official acts, and France has not sought to arrest him. The practical effect may therefore be limited unless the crown prince travels to a jurisdiction willing to enforce a French warrant. Still, the timing is significant. The complaint was originally filed in July 2022, during Prince Mohammed’s visit to Paris for a summit, and the court’s ruling now injects a fresh legal variable into Europe’s often transactional relationship with the Saudi leadership. Whether this probe will become a precedent for other European judiciaries, or merely a gesture that national interests eventually sideline, remains an open question – but for the first time, a Western court has signalled that it considers the case of Jamal Khashoggi unresolved.