Human rights advocates protested against Mohammed bin Salman attending Queen Elizabeth II’s burial

According to Reuters, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was not invited to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II due to objections from human rights campaigners.

Controversially, the de-facto leader of Saudi Arabia was invited to the funeral of the late monarch, a move that was highly denounced.

A source from the British Foreign Office informed Reuters that the prince will no longer attend.

Prince Turki bin Mohammed al Saud is instead representing Saudi Arabia, the Foreign Office confirmed to Insider.

The Saudis opted to make the move, according to Reuters.

Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancée, wrote upon learning that the crown prince had been invited to the funeral, “The crown prince should not be allowed to be a part of this grieving and should not be permitted to pollute her memory or use this time of mourning to seek legitimacy and normality.”

Prince Mohammed is a controversial character due to the brutality of the Saudi court system and the murder of writer Jamal Khashoggi.

In October 2018, Khashoggi, a Saudi national and Washington Post contributor, was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

US intelligence believes that Prince Mohammed, often known as MBS, was intimately involved in Khashoggi’s murder, according to a declassified dossier provided by the administration of President Joe Biden in 2017.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence report: “We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman authorized an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to abduct or kill Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.”

In January 2020, UN experts demanded a “immediate” probe of the crown prince after a report said he was responsible for hacking the mobile phone of then-Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.

The authors suggested that the crown prince may have targeted Bezos due to The Washington Post’s critical coverage of the Saudi government, particularly articles written by Khashoggi.