Rights Groups Filing UN Complaint Over Saudi Prince’s Detention

By Staff, Agencies

Two rights groups are lodging a complaint to the United Nations over the "arbitrary" detention of a philanthropist Saudi prince, according to a document seen by AFP, adding to international pressure for his release.

In January 2018, Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, now 37, was swept up along with his father in a royal crackdown, leaving his supporters asking why the minor royal who posed no apparent challenge to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was targeted.

The complaint by the Geneva-based MENA Rights Group and the London-based ALQST follows this month's bombshell US lawsuit by a former senior Saudi intelligence official, Saad al-Jabri, who alleges Prince Mohammed tried to have him killed.

The developments spotlighted royal power plays in the oil-rich kingdom.

Prince Salman, educated at Paris's Sorbonne University, was held for around a year in the high-security al-Hai'r prison near Riyadh and later in a guarded villa in the capital, sources close to him said.

The prince was moved to a secret detention site in March but was mysteriously returned to the villa two months later, the sources said, after a $2 million US lobbying effort and petitions from European lawmakers calling for his release.

Seeking to further amplify the pressure, ALQST and MENA Rights Group will file a joint complaint Tuesday with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Geneva over his incarceration.

"Prince Salman and his father have been held for over 2.5 years without any charges," Ines Osman, director of MENA Rights Group, told AFP.

"Their detention has no legal basis."

Saudi authorities did not respond to AFP's request for comment.