RIYADH (Middle East Eye) – A Saudi Arabian man who was active in the 2011 anti-government protests in Qatif is at imminent risk of execution, a rights group has warned.
Saud al-Faraj, 42, was convicted in June 2021 of participating in protests, running a terrorist cell and killing police officers among other charges. He was sentenced to death this October.
Faraj denies the charges and is appealing against his conviction.
In a 19-page handwritten defence seen by Middle East Eye, Faraj describes how he was held in solitary confinement for 630 days and repeatedly tortured for refusing to confess.
“I would not be able to list all the violations I faced by the officials,” Faraj writes in an undated letter written after he was charged. “I have never harmed anyone, and my clean criminal and moral records can attest to this.”
Many of the details in Faraj’s letter have been corroborated by a former inmate who shared a cell with him at Dammam Prison for seven months, but was recently freed.
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), which represents Faraj, fears he could be executed at any time and believe there are dozens more on death row with him.
But it also worries that he may be swept up in a mass execution, a scenario ESOHR and other groups monitoring Saudi death row inmates are increasingly concerned about.
One reason, ESOHR states, is that cases of political prisoners which have been delayed for years are suddenly moving very quickly through the court system. It says it has documented more than 60 such cases in recent months, including those of at least 48 other people linked to the 2011 Qatif protests.
In March, the kingdom executed 81 people in one day, more than had been killed in the whole of 2021, just days before then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Three more men were executed during Johnson’s visit.
There had been sporadic protests in Qatif, a Shia-majority province in eastern Saudi Arabia, for years over widespread discrimination.
But in early 2011, as protests rumbled across the Arab world, demonstrations picked up once again in the province with protesters demanding the release of a group of men who had been held for years without trial.