A team of senior ALQST staffers recently returned from a successful advocacy trip to the United States, where they discussed the cases of Saudi prisoners of conscience with members of the US Congress, led a demonstration outside the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC, and spoke at the “Quest for Democracy in Saudi Arabia” conference.
From late April to mid-May, members of the ALQST team including Lina Alhathloul (Head of Monitoring and Advocacy), Abdullah Aljuraywi (Monitoring and Campaigns Officer), and Omaima Al Najjar (Programme Coordinator), as well as ALQST founder and trustee Yahya Assiri, visited Washington, DC to advocate for human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, focusing on the plight of prisoners of conscience, and to speak at the Quest for Democracy in Saudi Arabia conference.
The conference was the end result of a year-long organising effort by several NGOs, including ALQST partner Democratic Diwan, building on the “People's Vision for Reform in Saudi Arabia”, an initiative launched by leading Saudi activists and intellectuals as a blueprint for democracy and human rights for the people of Saudi Arabia. The conference brought together Saudi activists from all over the diaspora, and featured NGO speakers such as ALQST trustee Abdullah Alaoudh of the Middle East Democracy Center in Washington, Joey Shea of Human Rights Watch, and ALQST trustee Floor Beuming of Amnesty International, as well as political figures including US Congressman Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.), Baroness Helena Kennedy KC from the United Kingdom, and former president of Tunisia Moncef Marzouki.
ALQST’s representatives also met with members of the US Congress to discuss the cases of several high-profile Saudi prisoners of conscience, including human rights defender Mohammed al-Qahtani and humanitarian aid worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, both of whom have close connections to the United States: Mohammed al-Qahtani has a PhD from Indiana University, and his wife and five children currently live in New York; Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, prior to his arrest, was a resident of the United States, and his sister Areej and their mother are both US citizens. Al-Sadhan is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for hispeaceful, satirical posts on social media, and since October 2021 has been denied all contact with his family. Mohammed al-Qahtani’s 10-year prison sentence expired in November 2022, yet he too remains forcibly disappeared.
The ALQST team also played a prominent role in leading a demonstration outside the Saudi embassy in Washington, in which protestors demanded the Saudi authorities release all prisoners of conscience, abolish the death penalty, and lift arbitrary travel bans on detainees and their families. They highlighted cases where prisoners are serving lengthy sentences for offences relating to freedom of expression, including Osama Khalid (32 years), Salma al-Shehab (27 years), Waleed Abu al-Khair (15 years) and Manahel al-Otaibi (11 years), and they urged the Saudi authorities in particular to abolish the death penalty for those committing offences when under the age of 18, such as Abdullah al-Derazi. The demonstrators also called on the international community not to deport activists back to Saudi Arabia after they have sought asylum abroad, as in the case of Abdulrahman al-Khalidi, who currently faces deportation from Bulgaria despite his fear of torture if sent back.
