Amnesty International Report 2004 - Saudi Arabia

Covering events from January - December 2003

Gross human rights violations continued and were exacerbated by government "anti-terrorism" policies and acts of violence, some of which the authorities blamed on al-Qa'ida sympathizers. Hundreds of suspected religious activists, critics of the state and protesters were arrested or detained following their forcible return from other countries, and the legal status of those held from previous years remained shrouded in secrecy. Women played an unprecedented role in challenging discrimination against women, which nevertheless continued to be endemic. Torture and ill-treatment remained rife. At least 50 people were executed. Over a dozen foreign nationals were forcibly handed over to their governments. Around 3,500 Iraqi refugees remained as virtual prisoners in Rafha camp. The government continued to deny AI access to the country.

Background

Against a background of protests and violence the government intensified its advocacy of legal and political reforms while simultaneously exacerbating its already dire human rights record in the name of security and "combating terrorism".

In January and September intellectuals submitted two petitions to the government calling for reform. The first, signed by over 100 intellectuals, called for the separation of state powers, the establishment of an elected legislative body with a supervisory role over the government, and the creation of civil society institutions to spread the culture of tolerance and dialogue. In response the government met some signatories of the petition and in June the Crown Prince held a National Dialogue conference attended by some 50 intellectuals and clerics from different sections of society to discuss political and legal reforms. The second petition, signed by over 350 intellectuals, including 51 women, repeated the calls in the first petition and added other demands, notably the recognition of women's rights and fair distribution of wealth.

In October the government announced that it was planning to introduce popular participation in the election of 14 municipal councils, but no details were provided. The announcement coincided with an international conference in Riyadh entitled "Human Rights in War and Peace?" The conference, to which AI was not invited, was said to have avoided touching on the human rights situation in the country.

The reform activities were marred by acts of violence which resulted in scores of deaths. During the first quarter of the year several officials were murdered in al-Jawf Governorate. They included the Deputy Governor who was shot dead in February in front of his office in Sakakah. The government said it had arrested suspects and that they had confessed to the crime, but did not release any details as to whether this killing or others were politically motivated.

The violence escalated when on 12 May bombers attacked a residential area in Riyadh killing about 35 people, including about nine bombers, and injuring hundreds of residents. The government blamed the attack on suspected al-Qa'ida sympathizers. Security forces embarked on house raids and street chases of alleged suspects in different parts of the country, particularly in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Many of the house raids and street chases led to armed clashes and resulted in the killing of dozens of people, including members of the security forces.

Prisoners of conscience and political prisoners

Hundreds of suspected religious activists, critics of the state and protesters, including women, were detained following waves of arrests carried out throughout most of the year. Dozens of them were detained after their forcible return to Saudi Arabia by other governments, including Sudan, Syria, the USA and Yemen. Their conditions of detention and legal status, like those detainees held from previous years, remained unclear due to the secrecy of the criminal justice system which also lacks the most basic standards of fair trial.

Most of the detainees were targeted for arrest in the context of a government policy of "combating terrorism", the implementation of which was intensified in the aftermath of the bombings in Riyadh and other acts of violence. However, hundreds of people were arrested solely as critics of the state or following demonstrations held during and after the human rights conference in October.

• Um Sa'ud, a 60-year-old woman, was arrested on 14 October for having taken part in a demonstration that took place that day in Riyadh. She was reportedly beaten and ill-treated on arrest. During the demonstration she carried a picture of her son, Sa'ud al-Mutayri, who reportedly died during a fire in al-Ha'ir Prison on 15 September. She was apparently calling for the return of her son's body to the family. She and two other women were among more than 270 people arrested during the demonstration. The Interior Minister reportedly said that those arrested would be treated as "outlaws" and would receive a "deterrent" punishment. Most of them were released after interrogation, but the three women and 80 men were reportedly sentenced to 55 days in prison. They were believed to have been released on 17 December on completion of sentence.

• Abd al-'Aziz al-Tayyar, a 44-year-old former public relations director at Riyadh Chamber of Commerce, was arrested in September for criticizing the government during a television program broadcast by the satellite television station of the UK-based Saudi Arabian opposition group, the Movement of Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA). Police reportedly raided his house and arrested him while he was talking by telephone to a live program on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television station. He remained held in a Riyadh prison, reportedly without charge or trial. Three other people arrested with him also remained in detention at the end of the year.

• Muhammad Rajkhan, a 33-year-old father of seven children, was arrested on 8 February near his house in Jeddah. He was reportedly held incommunicado in al-Mabahith al-'Amma (General Intelligence) in Riyadh and allegedly tortured (see below). He was said to have been transferred to al-Ruwais Prison in Jeddah where he remained held at the end of the year.

Women challenge discrimination

Women's rights were a constant theme in the debate on political and legal reform, with women playing an unprecedented role. However, concrete change to the severe forms of discrimination against women remained a distant hope.

Throughout the year government officials, advocates of reform and the media in general touched on almost all forms of discrimination that devalue women, such as the prohibition of women's participation in public life, the subordination of women to men, and domestic violence, particularly with regard to female domestic workers. Women themselves seized the opportunity of the reform debate to advance their cause. Some signed the second reform petition. Some took part in demonstrations. Some had their own or other women's stories published to illustrate the suffering of women caused by the severe forms of discrimination and to challenge the rationale of such discrimination.

Torture and ill-treatment

Torture in detention

Because of the strict secrecy surrounding arrests and incommunicado detention, it was not possible to assess the scale of torture used against those arrested in connection with or following the violent incidents which took place. However, allegations of torture and ill-treatment of those detained in the name of security and "fighting terrorism", as well as of prisoners arrested in previous years, were reported.

• Muhammad Rajkhan was said to have suffered damage to his eardrum and loss of weight reportedly as a result of torture and ill-treatment after his arrest in February (see above).

• Five UK nationals and one Canadian national who were released from prison in August following a royal pardon provided detailed accounts of their treatment in prisons in Riyadh. They claimed that they repeatedly suffered various forms of torture during interrogation in order to force them to confess to police accusations against them. These included beatings all over the body and on the soles of the feet, sleep deprivation, and shackling and handcuffing for long periods.

Flogging and amputation

Flogging and amputation continued to be imposed by courts as judicial corporal punishment. Among those sentenced to flogging during the year was a woman schoolteacher who received 120 lashes in addition to three and a half months in prison. She was reportedly convicted of planting drugs in the briefcase of her fiancé and reporting him to the police in order to have him imprisoned and facilitate her separation from him. According to one press report she was forcibly engaged to him by her family who refused her request to go back on the marriage.

At least one person, Ghazi Muhammad Mohsen Abdul-Ghani, a Bangladeshi national, had his right hand amputated in March in Mecca. He was convicted of theft.

Refugees

Over a dozen foreign nationals, most of them Yemenis, were handed over to their governments. The Saudi Arabian authorities said that the handover was part of bilateral security cooperation agreements to "fight terrorism", but did not provide details of the names of those handed over or any criminal accusations against them. The detainees were not known to have been given the opportunity to challenge the decision of their forcible return on the grounds that they faced serious risk of human rights violations in their countries.

Up to 1,500 Iraqi refugees from the Gulf war of 1991 were, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, voluntarily repatriated to Iraq after the fall of the Iraqi government in April. They were among more than 5,000 Iraqis who spent over 12 years as virtual prisoners in the Rafha military camp in the northern desert near the border with Iraq and who were denied the opportunity to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia. Around 3,500 remained in the camp at the end of the year.

Death penalty

At least 50 people were executed. Nineteen of them were Saudi Arabian nationals; the rest were foreign nationals, including 19 Pakistani and six Afghan nationals. Twenty-six were convicted of drug-related offences and 24 were found guilty of murder. The number of those who remained under sentence of death was not known but they included two female domestic workers, Sara Jane Dematera, a Philippine national, and Sit Zainab, an Indonesian national. They had both been accused of murdering their employers and were sentenced to death after secret and summary trials in 1993 and 1999 respectively. Alexander Mitchell, a UK national, and William Sampson, a Canadian national, who were both sentenced to death on charges of lethal bombings in Saudi Arabia in 2000, were pardoned and released in August.

AI country visits

AI made several requests to visit Saudi Arabia, including a request to attend the human rights conference held in October, but received no positive response.