Human Rights Watch:
Saudi authorities should immediately release and drop all charges against Sulaiman al-Rashoodi, a 76-year-old former judge and president of the Saudi Association of Civil and Political Rights (ACPRA). He is one of 16 people detained in 2007 and convicted in 2011 for peacefully trying to establish a human rights organization in Jeddah.
As reported here earlier this week, a group of women and children were arrested Saturday in Riyadh after they staged a protest outside the National Society for Human Rights office on King Fahad Rd to demand the release of their detained family members. One of the women arrested was Abeer al-Sayed, wife of detained political activist Suleiman al-Rashudi. Amnesty International posted her account of the protest:
We started going from street to street to avoid having the placards taken from us. I was filming the whole thing, and I heard a police officer shout, “this one is taking pictures”. I ran but they followed me, so I appealed to people in their cars to help me. Two masked men in plain clothes from the General Directorate of Investigation got hold of me, and threw me to a female guard, who then threw me on one of the buses. They beat us and called us names.
Then after getting arrested:
They took our fingerprints and a DNA sample, and asked us who we are, about our leader, how we co-ordinate our activities, if we have Twitter accounts.
“Don’t you know that protests are forbidden under Shari’a?” one of them asked me. I responded that it is not, that there are different opinions on this. I told them even their interrogation was wrong, since I didn’t have a lawyer present with me. He told me my choice was to continue without a lawyer or stay in prison. So I let them continue.
This whole time we had nothing to eat, despite having children with us. We pleaded with them for food, and eventually around midnight they said they couldn’t give us food since everywhere was closed. After that they brought some juice and one packet of crisps for us to share amongst the children.
Amnesty has urged the Saudi government to release the protesters.
Saudi authorities have arrested political activist Suleiman al-Rashudi after he gave a lecture about the permissibility of protests, according to tweets by family members today. Using his Twitter account, al-Rashudi’s wife said her husband was arrested on his way to Qassim. “The reason, I believe, is because of his latest lecture,” she said.
Al-Rashudi is a lawyer and a former judge. He was arrested in 2007 with a group of activists who came to be known as the “Jeddah Reformers.” The government accused them of of terrorism and plotting to overthrow the monarchy. Amnesty International described them in its 2011 annual report as “advocates of peaceful political reform.”
After four years in detention, al-Rushoudi was released in 2011 on bail. Four months later, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison followed by a travel ban for another 15 years, but the sentence was not carried out.
Speaking before an audience of fellow activists Monday in Riyadh, al-Rashoudi said there is nothing in Islamic Sharia that bans peaceful protest. “The tyrant regime has closed all the other doors for reform,” he said, adding that the government “has not undertaken any serious reforms since the Arab Spring started,” despite all the calls for change on social media.
Al-Rashoudi, a veteran activist, was recently elected president of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA). Two members of the unlicensed human rights group are currently on trial.