Aya Al-Juhani: Arbitrarily Taken from Her Home, Then Disappeared After Completing Her Sentence
Together for Justice condemns the continued disappearance of Saudi human rights activist Aya Al-Juhani, who was arrested on 1 April 2016 over the peaceful expression of her views. Her case has become a stark example of home privacy violations, arbitrary detention, retrial after sentence completion, and enforced disappearance.
According to available human rights information, heavily armed Saudi security forces violently raided Al-Juhani’s home and took her away in a degrading manner, without respecting her privacy, the sanctity of her home, or allowing her to change and prepare in a way that preserved her dignity. This was not only a violation of her right to liberty and security of person; it also reflected the authorities’ disregard for the most basic legal and humanitarian safeguards during arrest operations.
Aya Al-Juhani’s case was not linked to violence or any genuine security threat. It was linked to her peaceful expression of opinion. She was later sentenced to three years in prison by the Specialized Criminal Court, a court frequently associated with the prosecution of prisoners of conscience, activists, and human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia.
Since her arrest, Al-Juhani has reportedly suffered a series of serious violations, including a full year in solitary confinement, repeated verbal abuse and humiliation, restrictions on communication with her family, and denial of adequate defence guarantees. These violations show that her suffering was not limited to the loss of liberty, but extended to psychological pressure and isolation from the outside world.
Although she completed her sentence in mid-2019 and a release order was reportedly issued, Saudi authorities did not release her. Instead, they retried her in August 2019 on new charges, after which her news was completely cut off. Retrying a detainee after the completion of her sentence, and then concealing her fate from her family and the public, amounts to a compound violation that goes beyond arbitrary detention and reaches the level of enforced disappearance.
The core of Aya Al-Juhani’s case is not only that she was imprisoned for peaceful speech. It is that Saudi authorities violated the privacy of her home, subjected her to isolation and humiliation, refused to release her after her sentence ended, and then pushed her into an unknown legal and detention status that ended in her total disappearance. This pattern shows how the law in Saudi Arabia can be turned from a tool of protection into a mechanism for extending punishment beyond any fair legal limits.
Together for Justice warns that the continued concealment of Al-Juhani’s fate since her retrial in August 2019 places her life and physical and psychological safety at direct risk. The absence of information about her place of detention, health condition, and legal status is not an administrative detail; it is the essence of enforced disappearance, depriving the victim of legal protection and her family of the truth.
The organization also stresses that violating the sanctity of a home during an arrest, particularly through an armed and degrading raid that disregards the detainee’s privacy, is an additional assault on human dignity. The authorities are responsible not only for the decision to arrest her, but also for the manner of arrest and for every psychological, physical, and moral harm that followed.
Together for Justice holds the Saudi authorities fully responsible for Aya Al-Juhani’s safety. It calls for the immediate disclosure of her place of detention, health condition, and legal status, and for her family and lawyer to be allowed to communicate with her without restriction.
The organization further calls for her immediate and unconditional release, and for an independent investigation into the circumstances of her arrest, the violation of her home, her solitary confinement, her retrial after completing her sentence, and the concealment of her fate. All those responsible for these violations must be held accountable.
Aya Al-Juhani’s case is not only the case of a prisoner of conscience. It is the case of a woman whose home was violated, whose freedom was taken because of peaceful expression, and whose fate has been hidden after she completed her sentence. More than ten years after her arrest, the urgent question remains: where is Aya Al-Juhani?
