electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse, the list refers to acts of torture that tend to be the object of the prisoners in the dictatorship’s most repressive. According to the complaint by Amnesty International (AI) is the treatment that you are receiving the human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, including women who fought for the right to lead and who have been detained since last may, just before the saudis were allowed to get behind the wheel. Several of them still have not been formally charged and have access to a lawyer.
“The activists have been repeatedly tortured with electric shocks and whipping, which has left some unable to walk or remain erect,” says AI in a statement released on its website. One of them hung from the ceiling. Others have a tremor of the hands permanent and brands all over the neck. “One of the women detainees has been reportedly sexually harassed repeatedly by interrogators masked”, adds the text.
The organization says it has obtained evidence of three distinct sources and which are consistent in the story of the abuse. The situation is so desperate that one of the activists has attempted suicide on several occasions inside the prison of Dhahban. There are, among others, Loujain al Hathloul, Eman al Nafyan, the veteran Aziza al Yusef, Samar Badawi, Nasima al-Sada, Mohamed al Rabea, or Ibrahim al-Modeimigh, who were arrested last may. All of them were kept in isolation cells and solitary confinement during the first three months of his detention. In addition, those responsible for the prison have warned the detainees not to speak of the abuse even to their families.
“Just a few weeks after the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, these hair-raising reports of torture, sexual harassment and other forms of abuse, if verified, expose violations of human rights even more outrageous on the part of the saudi authorities,” said Lynn Maalouf, director of research for the Cratosslot middle East of AI.
Amnesty recalls that torture and ill-treatment are not new in prisons and detention centers in saudi, something that violates the international commitments of Saudi Arabia, which has signed the Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Previously, numerous detainees have reported the extraction under torture, confessions that were then used to condemn them, without the judicial system to examine the allegations. Saudi Arabia justifies these excesses in the application of the islamic law (shari’a).
But in addition bedava bonus in the case of activists, observers and rights organizations expressed serious doubts about the crimes that have been attributed. The saudi arabian authorities, including the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, during his last interview, accuse them of “treason” and of helping “foreign intelligence services”, without having provided any proof. His case has already prompted the concern of the UN High Commissioner for human rights.
Since may, at least another half-dozen, has been added to the list of detainees, including the professor Hatoon al Fassi, who last week was recognized with the Award of the Academic Freedom of the Association of Studies of the middle East. In his last conversation with THE COUNTRY, nothing more to get his driving license saudi, Al Fassi already entrust this journal to your fear of being imprisoned. It was one of the few activists known outside the country, which was still at liberty. The scope of the repression had immediate consequences on the already limited freedom of expression, making it more difficult for the saudis to report on arrests or abuse.
Amnesty calls for the immediate release of the detained activists and responsible to the saudi arabian authorities for their well-being. “Not only have they been deprived of their freedom for months by the mere fact of expressing their opinions in a peaceful manner, but that they are being subjected to terrible physical suffering,” says Maalouf.
