NEW YORK (Middle East Eye) – The United Nations has warned Saudi Arabia for the second time in six months that enforcing the death penalty on two Bahraini men who were allegedly tortured and forced to make confessions could constitute arbitrary execution.
In a June letter sent to Saudi authorities, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions said the kingdom should halt “any possible steps towards the execution” of Jaafar Mohammad Sultan and Sadeq Majeed Thamer, who were convicted of ‘terrorism-related charges’ which rights groups say were trumped up.
Instead, Saudi authorities should fully investigate allegations that the men, who are both Shia, were tortured “to ensure that they are re-tried in conformity with international law and standards”, says the letter, which was only made public this week.
Sultan, 30, and Thamer, 32, were arrested in May 2015 by Saudi customs officials while crossing the King Fahd Causeway from Bahrain into Saudi Arabia.
Saudi authorities did not present a warrant or explain why the men were being arrested, and they were held in solitary confinement in the General Investigation Prison in Dammam for nearly four months, according to the Washington-based advocacy group Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB).
Their families, meanwhile, consulted various Bahraini and Saudi authorities to find out what had happened to the men, without success, and only heard from them 115 days after their arrest, when they were allowed to call home, the ADHRB said.
Sultan and Thamer have told their families, lawyers and a Saudi Arabian court that they were physically and psychologically tortured and coerced into making confessions, according to rights groups. The groups say the men were also denied access to lawyers until after their trial in Saudi Arabia began, and that their lawyers did not have access to all of the court documents.
They were tried in Bahrain, in absentia, and in Saudi Arabia on similar charges, which included ‘establishing a terror cell’ and participating in demonstrations in Bahrain. In 2016 they were found guilty in a Bahraini court, sentenced to life imprisonment and stripped of their citizenship.
In March, the kingdom executed 81 men - including 41 from Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority - in one day, an act which Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, has said was “all the more chilling in light of Saudi Arabia’s deeply flawed justice system”.