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RIGHTS-SAUDI ARABIA: Indefinite Detention in the Name of Counterterrorism
By Marina Litvinsky
WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (IPS) - Human rights groups have accused Saudi Arabia of unlawfully detaining
thousands of people without trial or conviction under its counterterrorism
programme since 2003.
According to a July report, ‘Saudi Arabia: Assaulting Human Rights in the
Name of Counter-Terrorism,’ from the London-based Amnesty International,
thousands of people have been arrested and detained in virtual secrecy, while
hundreds more people face secret and summary trials and possible
execution.
Many are reported to have been tortured in order to extract confessions or as
punishment after conviction, all under the guise of counterterrorism
operations.
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, ‘Human Rights and Saudi Arabia’s
Counterterrorism Response: Religious Counselling, Indefinite Detention, and
Flawed Trials,’ issued Monday, documents Saudi Arabia’s response to threats
and acts of terrorism since Al-Qaeda-linked militants launched a campaign
there in 2003.
This includes the indefinite detentions of more than 9,000 people, some of
them peaceful political dissidents. The report claims the domestic intelligence
agency, the General Directorate for Investigations or ‘mabahith’ - which runs
its own prisons - has prevented effective judicial oversight.
"Saudi Arabia’s response to terrorism for years has been to lock up thousands
of suspects and throw away the key," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East
director at HRW. "The authorities made believe that religious counselling
could replace trials, and now they are pretending that convictions after secret
trials can legitimise continued detention."
In July the Ministry of Justice announced that 330 people had been convicted
on terrorism charges, with sentences ranging from fines to the death penalty.
The report claims the trials were secret and unfair.
"These unjust anti-terrorism measures have made an already dire human
rights situation worse," said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty
International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. "The Saudi Arabian
government has used its powerful international clout to get away with it. And
the international community has failed to hold the government to account for
these gross violations."
Of the thousands detained by the authorities, some are prisoners of
conscience, targeted for their peaceful criticism of government policies. The
majority are suspected supporters of Islamist groups or factions - opposed to
the Saudi Arabian government’s close links to the U.S. and other Western
countries - which have carried out a number of attacks targeting Westerners
and others, and are officially dubbed as "misguided." They also include
people forcibly returned from Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and other countries,
according to Amnesty.
The HRW report claims that instead of allowing those detained to challenge
their detention before a judge, the Interior Ministry offered religious
counselling to mabahith detainees - including those transferred from the U.S.
detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Approval from the counsellors is
one of the requirements for release.
At least 1,500 detainees who participated in this programme have been
released.
Buy, such an involuntary programme is inappropriate for detainees who have
not been convicted of any crime and who should be presumed innocent.
International human rights law does not permit the detention of persons to
undergo a re-education programme, HRW said.
The HRW report documents government pressure on lawyers not to represent
suspected militants, and includes information from families of detainees, who
said that they were not informed in advance of trial dates, and that their
jailed relatives had no access to legal counsel, and were being tried in
summary proceedings based on confessions the mabahith provided to the
court.
Saudi Arabia has a legal limit of six months in detention before trial, and
some families have challenged their relatives’ detention before the Board of
Grievances, the Saudi administrative court. However, the Interior Ministry,
which is responsible for the mabahith, ignored the court’s order to release
detainees held longer than the legal limit, the report said.
For example, in April, the court ordered the mabahith to release Majid al-
Husaini - detained without charge since Aug. 2002, when he was 17. He
remains in detention.
"The mabahith acts as if it is above the law," said Whitson. "King Abdullah’s
judicial reforms should be measured against the compliance of the security
apparatus with basic tenets of the rule of law.
The U.S. and UK closely cooperate with Saudi counterterrorism officials,
publicly praising their religious re-education programme, but they have not
criticised either the indefinite detention of thousands of people or the flawed
trials of a further 330 suspects, the HRW report said.
Happy that Saudi Arabia is taking steps to fight terrorists, "the U.S. has
largely closed its eyes to the human rights violations in Saudi Arabia’s
counterterrorism efforts," Christoph Wilcke, senior researcher in the Middle
East and North Africa division at HRW, told IPS.
U.S. cooperation with Saudi Arabia has included the sharing of intelligence on
terrorism, as well as support of the Saudi rehabilitation centre.
However, since two graduates of the programme went on to Yemen to unify
the Yemen and Saudi branches of al Qaeda, the effectiveness of the centre
has been in question, and no one has been released while Saudi officials are
reassessing the programme, Wilcke added.
The Saudi government reported in Jan. 2009 that 11 former Guantanamo
detainees who went through the rehabilitation programme had escaped Saudi
monitoring, but at least five were quickly re-arrested.
This may present a problem for U.S. President Barack Obama, who had
announced plans to close Guantanamo Bay, which houses nearly 100 Yemeni
detainees, the largest remaining national contingent there.
The Obama administration is pursuing talks with the Saudi and Yemeni
governments over the detainees’ possible transfer into Saudi custody and its
rehabilitation programme, over concerns about a resurgence of militant
groups in Yemen and the government’s uneven record in law enforcement
and detention practices.
Arbitrary arrests and prolonged detention of political and security suspects
without trial and without access to lawyers have been long-standing human
rights problems in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia was included in Freedom
House’s annual ‘Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies’
report for 2009.
The anti-terrorism measures adopted by the Saudi government since the
9/11 attacks in the U.S. have set back limited human rights reforms in the
country, said Amnesty.
HRW called on Saudi Arabia to release or try all remaining mabahith
detainees, regardless of participation in religious counselling. All detainees to
be tried must be charged with cognisable offenses and the trials should be
open and guarantee defendants all rights to a fair trial.
It called on foreign governments such as the U.S. and UK to monitor these
trials and to speak out when defendants’ rights are violated.
"Justice has to be fair and must be seen to be fair," said Whitson. "The closed,
summary Saudi trials are neither - they are sham justice.
(END/2009)
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