Saudi Arabia Uses Terrorism As
An Excuse for Human Rights
Abuses
By Arjun Sethi
Reports emerged last week that Saudi
Arabia intends to imminently execute
more than 50 people on a single day for
alleged terrorist crimes.
Although the kingdom hasn’t officially
confirmed the reports, the evidence is
building. Okas,
the first outlet to publish the report,
has close ties to the Saudi Ministry of
Interior and would not have published
the story without obtaining government
consent. Some of the prisoners slated
for execution were likewise recently
subject to
an unscheduled medical exam, a sign
that many believe portends imminent
execution. There has already been
a spike in capital punishment in Saudi
Arabia this year, with at least 151
executions, compared with 90 for all of
2014.
The cases of six Shia
activists from Awamiya,
a largely Shia town in the oil-rich
Eastern province, are particularly
disconcerting. The majority of Saudi’s
minority Shia population is concentrated
in the Eastern province and has long
faced government persecution. The six
activists were convicted for protesting
this mistreatment and other related
crimes amid the Arab uprisings in 2011.
Three of them were arrested when they
were juveniles.
Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a prominent
Shia religious leader who was convicted
of similar charges, also faces imminent
execution.
All the convictions were obtained
through
unfair trials marred by human and civil
rights violations, including in some
cases torture, forced confessions and
lack of access to counsel. Each
defendant was tried before the
Specialized Criminal Court, a
counterterrorism tribunal controlled by
the Ministry of Interior that has
few procedural safeguards and is
often used to persecute political
dissidents. Lawyers are generally
prohibited from counseling their clients
during interrogation and have limited
participatory rights at trial.
Prosecutors aren’t even required to
disclose the charges and relevant
evidence to defendants.
The problems aren’t just procedural.
Saudi law criminalizes dissent and the
expression of fundamental civil rights.
Under an anti-terrorism law passed in
2014, for example, individuals may
be executed for vague acts such as
participating in or inciting protests,
“contact or correspondence with any
groups … or individuals hostile to the
kingdom” or “calling for atheist
thought.”
One of the defendants, Ali al-Nimr, was
convicted of crimes such as
“breaking allegiance with the ruler” and
“going out to a number of marches,
demonstrations and gathering against the
state and repeating some chants against
the state.” For these offenses, he has
been sentenced to beheading and
crucifixion, with his beheaded body to
be put on public display as a warning to
others.
Because of these procedural and legal
abominations, the planned executions for
these Shia activists must not proceed.
They should be retried in public
proceedings and afforded due process
protections consistent with
international law, which includes a ban
on the death penalty for anyone under
the age of 18.
No
other executions should take place in
Saudi Arabia. Capital punishment is
morally repugnant and rife with error
and bias, as we know all too well in the
United States. Moreover, any outcome
produced by the Saudi criminal justice
system is inherently suspect. Inadequate
due process, violations of basic human
rights and draconian laws that
criminalize petty offenses and
exercising of civil rights
are fixtures of Saudi rule.
They’re also fixtures of authoritarian
regimes in general. Those who simply
expect Saudi Arabia to reform its
criminal justice system ignore the fact
that the kingdom is an authoritarian
regime that uses the law as a tool to
maintain and consolidate power. They
also ignore the reality that Saudi
Arabia often escapes moral condemnation
in large part because of its close
relationship with the U.S.
In
2014, for example, President Barack
Obama
visited the kingdom but made no
mention of its ongoing human rights
violations. In return, he and the first
family
received $1.4 million in gifts from the
Saudi king. (By law U.S. presidents
must either pay for such gifts or turn
them over to the National Archives.) The
two leaders discussed energy security
and military intelligence, shared
interests that have connected the U.S.
and Saudi Arabia for nearly a century.
Obama traveled to the kingdom earlier
this year to offer his condolences on
the passing of King Abdullah and to meet
with the new ruler, King Salman. Again,
human rights were never mentioned.
Instead, U.S. National Security Adviser
Susan Rice
tweeted that Abdullah was a “close
and valued friend of the United States.”
This deafening silence is not lost on
Saudi Arabia and has emboldened its
impunity. In the wake of the Arab
uprisings, the kingdom’s brutal campaign
against its Shia minority and political
opposition has deepened. Shias
have limited access to government
employment and public education, few
rights under the criminal justice system
and diminished religious rights. Those
who protest this discrimination face
arbitrary trial and the prospect of
execution for terrorism. Consider that
Saudi Arabia
has not carried out a mass execution
for terrorism-related offenses since
1980, a year after an armed group
occupied the Grand Mosque of Mecca.
Dissent of any kind is quelled. In
November, Ashraf Fayadh, a Palestinian
poet and artist born in Saudi Arabia,
was
sentenced to death for allegedly
renouncing Islam. His supporters
allege that he’s being punished
for posting a video of police lashing a
man in public.
Even the kingdom’s neighbors aren’t
immune from its authoritarian agenda.
Numerous reports suggest that the
Saudi-led coalition against opposition
groups in Yemen has indiscriminately
attacked civilians and used cluster
bombs in civilian-populated areas, in
violation of international law.
Despite its appalling human rights
record, Saudi Arabia was awarded a seat
on the U.N. Human Rights Council last
year and this summer was
selected to oversee an influential
committee within the council that
appoints officials to report on
country-specific and thematic human
rights challenges. Unsurprisingly, Saudi
Arabia has used its newfound power to
thwart an international inquiry into
allegations that it committed war crimes
in Yemen.
It’s not by happenstance that the
kingdom announced the mass execution
just days after 130 people were killed
in Paris in the worst terrorist attacks
in Europe in more than a decade. Even
before Paris, the U.S. used its “war on
terrorism” to invade and occupy
Afghanistan and Iraq, engage in mass
surveillance and develop an
assassination program immune from
judicial oversight. Is it any surprise
that Saudi Arabia feels emboldened to
intensify its own “war on terrorism”?