The internationally outlawed practice of enforced disappearance remains systematic and widespread in Saudi Arabia, and is extensively applied by the Saudi authorities to prisoners of conscience, including those due for release. ALQST is currently deeply concerned for the well-being of two veteran human rights activists who were due for release from prison in late 2022 but were instead forcibly disappeared, with the authorities refusing to reveal their fate or whereabouts.
Mohammed al-Qahtani completed a 10-year prison sentence on 22 November 2022 but has still not been released, and has been denied all contact with his family since 24 October 2022. The authorities refuse to give any information about him, and despite their claiming in January 2023, in response to a UN communication, that al-Qahtani was detained in “Riyadh Correctional Facility” (Al-Ha’ir Prison), on 23 July 2023, in a recorded call reviewed by ALQST, prison officials there stated that his name could not be found in their system. Al-Qahtani’s family suspect that he is being treated like this in reprisal for his filing a complaint about the repeated assaults he has suffered in prison, highlighting the additional punitive measures taken by the authorities.
Similarly, Essa al-Nukheifi has been forcibly disappeared since 15 October 2022, after he announced a hunger strike in protest over not being released from jail when his six-year sentence expired in September 2022.
Saudi Arabia has not yet ratified the 1992 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED), and systematically practises enforced disappearance – sometimes lasting months or even years – to silence activists and other critics.
Humanitarian worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan was arrested by secret police in March 2018 from his workplace at the headquarters of the Saudi Red Crescent in Riyadh and forcibly disappeared for 23 months. Al-Sadhan was sentenced in April 2021 to 20 years in jail for peaceful comments posted on Twitter, and since an appeal court appearance in August of that year has been forcibly disappeared again. The authorities have denied him any contact with his family for over two years.
Journalist Turki al-Jasser was likewise arrested in March 2018, following a raid on his home. For almost two years he was not allowed visits or phone calls, and the Saudi authorities refused to answer any inquiries about him. Apart from a single phone call to his family in February 2020, he has again been denied all further contact.
While disappeared, individuals are at heightened risk of other human rights violations, such as torture, because they are held outside the protection of the law. Preacher Sulaiman al-Dowaish has been forcibly disappeared since being arrested on 22 April 2016, after tweeting comments critical of King Salman and Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and brutally tortured by high-ranking officials at an unofficial place of detention in Riyadh. The last reported sighting of al-Dowaish was in July 2018; since then there has been no news of him or his health or whereabouts.
ALQST’s Head of Monitoring and Advocacy, Lina al-Hathloul, commented: “Enforced disappearances inflict torment that reaches beyond the victims themselves, extending to loved ones who are left in a heart-wrenching void of uncertainty, and leaving families suspended between hope and despair. Saudi Arabia must eradicate this cruel practice without exception.”
On the UN International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, ALQST urges Saudi Arabia’s authorities to immediately put an end to this practice, and to ratify the 1992 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
