Saudi Arabia sentences founders of civil rights group

A terrorism tribunal in Saudi Arabia, which was elected to the UN Human Rights Council in 2013, has sentenced two political activists to decade-long prison terms for establishing a rights organisation, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

Abdulkareem al-Khoder, one of 11 founding members of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), was sentenced to 10 years in prison under a year-old counter-terrorism law, Amnesty said.

On Wednesday, another ACPRA member, Abdulrahman al-Hamid, was sentenced to nine years in prison followed by a nine-year travel ban.

His brother, Issa al-Hamid, was due to be sentenced last week, but the court session was postponed to November.

The sentences dealt a further blow to civil rights activism in Saudi Arabia, which has been targeted by a sweeping security crackdown since the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.

All 11 of ACPRA’s founding members, which was established in 2009, are either in prison or awaiting trial.

“The outrageous convictions of ACPRA members for their human rights activism, coming on top of Saudi Arabia’s already appalling human rights record, makes a further mockery of its obligations as a member of the UN Human Rights Council,” said James Lynch, Middle East director at Amnesty.

A Saudi judiciary spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

The interior ministry has previously said ACPRA’s involvement in a string of protests against what it called extrajudicial imprisonment of suspected militants had led to attacks in the kingdom.

‘Disobeying the ruler’

Al-Khoder, a former professor of Islamic jurisprudence, was previously sentenced to eight years in prison in 2013 by a criminal court, for offences including “disobeying the ruler” and “taking part in founding an unlicenced organisation”.

His conviction comes amid a flurry of activity by the Saudi Specialised Criminal Court (SCC), a tribunal established in 2008 to try terrorism cases, but often used for political offences.

The SCC recently reopened its case against ACPRA’s youngest member, Omar al-Sa’id, who was sentenced in 2013 to four-years’ imprisonment and 200 lashes.

Last Tuesday, the court sentenced another activist, Abdulaziz Abdulatif Alsonaidi, to eight years in prison and a travel ban, according to the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia.

Alsonaidi was charged with signing an ACPRA petition and writing tweets critical of the king, the group said in a statement.

Reuters