Ongoing Detention of Aisha Al-Muhajiri in Saudi Prisons Despite Her Old Age

For almost a year, the elderly detainee Aisha Al-Muhajiri is still detained in Saudi Arabia without legal basis, and without announcing the reasons for her arrest. Her children have also been threatened with arrest if they requested information about her and her arrest.

Last February, a security force in Mecca raided the home of the 65-year-old elderly woman and transferred her to Dhahban prison. She was not allowed to communicate with a lawyer or find out the legal reasons behind her arrest, and she was denied the right to communicate with or receive visitations from her family.

According to private sources, Aisha Al-Muhajiri is being detained for holding classes to teach the Qur’an in her home without official permission, yet she was not allowed to take the legal procedures followed in such cases to request her release.

Aisha Al-Muhajiri is witnessing inhumane treatment. She is held in very poor conditions and deprived of her family, who were threatened with arrest if they tried to find out any news of her. She is also deprived of all her legal rights, and her reputation has been tarnished via the systematic campaigns of the Saudi regime which targets all dissidents or prisoners of conscience who criticise the authorities.

The arrest of Al-Muhajiri is illegal, and the continued detention while violating all her human and legal rights is a crime against her, especially as she is an elderly person who needs special health care due to her old age.

We call on the Saudi authorities to immediately and urgently release Aisha Al-Muhajiri and all elderly detainees, given the imminent danger to their lives that the continued detention in the notorious Saudi prisons poses.