UN Body: Saudi Arabia Arbitrarily Detained Activists
Local Editor
On 6 February 2017, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention [WGAD] released Opinion No. 61/2016. In the opinion, the WGAD determined that Saudi Arabia's ongoing treatment of Ali al-Nimr, Dawood Hussein al-Marhoon, and Abdullah Hasan al-Zaher constitutes arbitrary detention and violates a number of international legal principles.
Saudi security forces arrested Ali, Dawood, and Abdullah in three separate incidents during the first half of 2012. Each was targeted for having participated in peaceful anti-government protests in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, and each was a minor at the time of his arrest: Ali and Dawood were 17 years old, and Abdullah was 15.
The Saudi government held the boys in pre-trial detention for 20-22 months before trying them in the country's Specialized Criminal Court [SCC]. The SCC is charged with prosecuting terror-related crimes, and it has been repeatedly criticized by international human rights organizations for a variety of judicial irregularities and due process violations.
Such abuses include trying peaceful political dissidents and activists, refusing to show defendants the evidence against them, and preventing defendants from speaking with their lawyers. The trials failed to meet international standards of due process.
In 2014, the SCC sentenced the three young men to death and they remain at imminent risk of execution.
In addition to satisfying the conditions of arbitrary detention as delineated by the WGAD, Saudi Arabia violated several international treaties.
Saudi authorities violated, for example, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment [CAT], to which it acceded in 1997, when it tortured Ali, Dawood, and Abdullah and used their coerced confessions as evidence against them in court.
Further, torturing, arbitrarily detaining, and denying due process protections to a minor violates Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC], to which Saudi Arabia acceded in 1996.
Article 37 of the CRC also prohibits imposing the death penalty for crimes committed while under the age of 18. So, too, does the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR], but Saudi Arabia has not acceded to this treaty. Instead, the Government of Saudi Arabia has made such applications of the death penalty a regular practice.
Since 2011, Saudi authorities have arrested more than sixty children, some of which they have gone on to execute, including Mustafa Abkar, Amin Mohammed Aqla al-Ghamidi, and Ali al-Ribh.
The WGAD concluded its opinion by urging the Saudi Government not to carry out the death sentences of the three activists. It requested the Saudi government accede to the ICCPR and to amend its domestic legislation to accord with the country's international human rights commitments.
The opinion also requested that Saudi officials take immediate steps to remedy the situation and bring it into conformity with international human rights law, namely by releasing the three men immediately and granting them reparations.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
