Abdullah Basfar: The Forgotten Professor in the Darkness of Saudi Prisons
It has been a year since the arrest of Dr. Sheikh Abdullah Basfar at the hands of Saudi authorities and the security services which has forcibly disappeared him.
In August 2020, the Saudi Security Services arrested Sheikh Abdullah Basfar, imam of the Mansour Al-Shuaibi mosque in Al-Salama neighborhood in Jeddah, in mysterious circumstances, until his detention was confirmed in September, however, he was not presented before any judicial body and remains deprived of all his legal and human rights like many other prisoners of conscience suffer from.
Sheikh Abdullah Basfar is an associate professor in the Department of Sharia and Islamic Studies at King Abdulaziz University. He also held the position of Secretary-General of the International Organisation for the Book and the Sunnah. God blessed him with a sweet voice and abundant knowledge that enabled him to become one of the most famous reciters of the Holy Qur’an in the world.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has honored him in various forums, however, they detained him incommunicado in a cell, thus depriving millions of people of his knowledge and his great role in social reform and religious advocacy.
The arrest of Sheikh Dr. Abdullah Basfar caused waves of shock among his fans and students, who did not find any justification for the detention of this man who urged people to help the poor and needy and the renaissance of society by spreading peace and love everywhere.
We – the team Together for Justice – urge the Saudi authorities to clarify the legal position of Sheikh Abdullah Basfar, and present him before the appropriate authorities, and reveal the reasons and place of his detention.
We also call on the relevant UN bodies, international civil society organizations, and decision-makers around the world to urgently intervene and form a special committee to investigate violations against Saudi detainees, to ensure that they obtain all their basic human and legal rights, and to ensure that they are not brought to trial based on confessions extracted under torture.
The human rights situation in Saudi Arabia is getting worse every day, and in light of the negative attitude of the international community, which is still cooperating with the Saudi regime on the economic, military, and security levels, the number of victims of this regime will definitely increase dramatically.
We warn that against the current violations in Saudi Arabia amid the lack of any deterring measures against perpetrators of crimes by the Saudi officials, which will result in unprecedented levels of violations, with which saving the Saudi people will be very difficult.
This dictator regime derives its strength from the shameful international silence.
