Arresting the Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca for praying against the oppressors
the imam and preacher of the Grand Mosque, Sheikh Saleh Al Talib, never imagine that a word of truth would be a reason for depriving him of his freedom for an indefinite period by supreme orders.
48 hours after the Friday Sermon of August 17, 2018, Sheikh Saleh was arrested and he remains in prison until now without any charge raised against him.
The authorities insist on ignoring all human rights demands to disclose his legal position or the reasons and circumstances of his arrest.
During that sermon, Sheikh Saleh spoke of the evil deeds and the necessity of opposing them, and he concluded his sermon by praying against “tyrants and oppressors,”. During his sermon, he spoke at length about the tyranny of the Israeli occupation forces and the injustice they practice against the Palestinian people for more than 7 decades.
Sheikh Saleh also asserted that “Since the conquest until Judgement day, Palestine and the city of Jerusalem is an Arab and Islamic country, and the exception is its fall in the hands of others.”, adding “Every force try to state otherwise is fuelling violence and hatred, and it causes a rift in humanity and distortions in civilization, which will result in its own loss.”
He also stressed that “it is not appropriate for the Islamic nation to be driven to side conflicts, indicating that the great interests of the nation must be given priority over every sub-interest, the calls of truth and justice, the initiatives of reason to rise above differences and unite the nation.”
The speech of Sheikh Saleh was was completely contrary to the regime, which carries out fierce arrests of anyone calling for Arab unity, as they consider this as a call for reconciliation with Qatar, which was an enemy of Saudi Arabia following the boycott in June 2017.
The Sheikh’s continuous condemnation of Israel and the Israeli aggression was considered a violation of the normalization policy that the current regime seems to be seeking.
It is worth noting that since September 2017 the Saudi authorities have arrested dozens of preachers, intellectuals and civil activists, most of them are still in arbitrary detention until now, such as the preacher Salman Al-Odah and Awad Al-Qarni, for whom secret court sessions are held, just like all prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia who have been subjected to brutal torture to force them to make confessions on crimes they did not commit, in addition to depriving them of family visits and the ill and degrading treatment they encounter inside prisons.
Sheikh Saleh is being exposed to wide violations and repression practised by the current regime against anyone who says anything that contradicts the regime’s policies, despite the fact that freedom of expression is a universally guaranteed right of every human being.
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