Saudi Arabia: Where is Dr. Mohammed Al-Qahtani?
November 22, 2022 was supposed to be the release date of Saudi activist Dr. Mohammed Al-Qahtani after spending his 10-year prison sentence for establishing the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA). However, he was not released amid sudden disappearance for nearly a month.
Al-Qahtani’s wife, Mrs. Maha Al-Qahtani, affirmed that her imprisoned husband is again being denied family contact by the prison administration, who refused to give any information about him since Oct. 24.
Al-Qahtani, a former professor at the Riyadh Institute for Diplomatic Studies, was arrested in 2012 along with other cofounders of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) which called for focussing on the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and for an elected parliament and the creation of legal institutions to support transparency and accountability in the Kingdom.
One year later, Al-Qahtani was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by a 10-year travel ban after an unfair and secret trial.
The sudden disappearance of Al-Qahtani came shortly after he demanded, in a phone call with his wife, to file a complaint about the repeated harassment and ill-treatment he has faced in prison. However, the phone conversation was suddenly ended, and his fate remained unknown since then.
In detention, Al-Qahtani was subjected to repeated harassment and human rights violations, pushing him to declare a hunger strike more than once in protest against his difficult detention conditions.
Together for Justice declares total support to the Al-Qahtani family, and calls on the Saudi authorities to reveal his fate and to immediately release him, as there is no legal basis for his continued detention.
