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Muhammad Al-Rabiah’s Retrial Is an Arbitrary, Unfair Decision

Together for Justice considers the Saudi decision to retry the human rights activist Muhammad Al-Rabiah, despite completing his prison sentence, as an arbitrary and politicized decision based on vague and invalid charges, stressing that he must be released immediately.

Muhammad Al-Rabiah was supposed to be released last May, as he had completed his 4-year prison sentence, but he was kept in Saudi custody without any legal basis before being brought to trial again over unrevealed charges.

Muhammad Al-Rabiah was arrested along with a number of women’s rights defenders in May 2018, and sentenced on April 20, 2021 to six years in prison and two years suspended over his human rights activism. Then the appeals court upheld the ruling and became Permanently.

Since his detention, Muhammad al-Rabiah was subjected to serious human rights violations and ill-treatment at the hands of the Saudi security forces documented by Human Rights Watch in July 2021.

An informed source told Human Rights Watch that prison authorities tortured Al-Rabiah for months, including with electric shocks, waterboarding, and beatings.

They held him in small spaces without sleep or rest for days at a time, hung him upside down, and often deprived him of meals during his first year of detention, the source said.

Together for Justice calls on Saudi authorities to immediately release the activist Muhammad Al-Rabiah, to drop all charges against him, and open an investigation into the violations he was subjected to during his detention.

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