Sarah and Omar Al-Jabri Should Not be Forgotten in Saudi Prisons
After years of silence, the former Saudi intelligence official Saad Al-Jabri spoke openly to the media about the persecution he and his family have been subjected to because of his opposition to the current Saudi regime under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In a television interview with Scott Bailey – presenter of the CBS 60 Minutes program, Saad Al-Jabri accused Prince Mohammed bin Salman of plotting to kill him and hold his sons hostage to pressure him to return to Saudi Arabia and stop his opposition.
Saad Al-Jabri had left Saudi Arabia in 2017 and settled in Canada, to which he says that the Saudi crown prince sent a trained squad to assassinate him and get rid of him a few days after the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2018, the crime that US intelligence said bin Salman had agreed to commit.
On the day of the inauguration of Mohammed bin Salman as crown prince, a direct violation against the Al-Jabri family in Saudi Arabia took place as two of Al-Jabri’s sons – Sarah and Omar – were banned from leaving Saudi Arabia, and after about two years, Omar and Sarah and one of their relatives were and sentenced to prison in a secret trial, during which they were denied legal representation. The authorities did not disclose the reasons for their arrest until after the verdict was issued, as they were accused of financial corruption crimes.
In this regard, we remind the whole world about the case of Omar and Sarah Al-Jabri, the two young Saudis who were turned into hostages by the regime despite their young age and without committing any offense except that their father decided not to follow in the footsteps of the country’s de facto ruler, whose hands were stained with the blood of innocent people such as Abdul Rahim Al-Hwaiti, the victim of the NEOM project, and the dead in Saudi detention centers like Abdullah Al-Hamid and Sheikh Musa Al-Qarni – or other peoples, like the Yemeni people, who suffer both because of the Saudi military intervention that turned the country into the poorest country in the world, and left it suffering from the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world.
We call on the various international working groups, and people of the world, to take practical and effective measures against the Saudi regime to pressure it to release all political detainees and to reveal the fate of the forcibly disappeared, including Omar and Sarah Al-Jabri.
We also call on decision-makers in the international community to stop cooperation with the current Saudi regime unless it adheres to guarantee of the improvement of human rights conditions in Saudi Arabia, and hold all those responsible for crimes and violations committed against citizens accountable.
