Waleed Abu Al-Khair: A Saudi Human Rights Lawyer Imprisoned for Over 11 Years for Defending Justice
Together for Justice renews its urgent appeal to the international community and relevant UN human rights mechanisms to take immediate action and exert serious pressure on the Saudi authorities to secure the release of prominent Saudi human rights lawyer and activist Waleed Abu Al-Khair, who has been arbitrarily detained for more than eleven years solely because of his peaceful human rights work and legal defense of prisoners of conscience and victims of state abuses.
Waleed Abu Al-Khair is widely regarded as one of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent human rights defenders. His case reflects a deliberate transformation from lawyer to prisoner: a man who once stood in court defending the oppressed has himself become a prisoner of conscience, paying with his freedom for refusing to abandon his principles. In 2014, Saudi authorities arrested Abu Al-Khair after he refused to sign a pledge to cease his human rights activities, a clear demonstration of the state’s policy of criminalising independent rights work and punishing those who refuse to submit to official dictates.
Abu Al-Khair is currently serving an unjust 15-year prison sentence following a politicised trial that failed to meet even the most basic standards of fairness. He was denied his fundamental right to legal representation and subjected throughout his detention to severe psychological and physical abuse, as well as inhumane detention conditions. This prolonged pattern of violations has resulted in a serious deterioration of his health.
According to reliable information received by Together for Justice, Waleed Abu Al-Khair’s medical condition inside Dhahban Prison in Jeddah has reached an advanced and alarming stage. Despite his critical need for medical care, prison authorities continue to deny him access to adequate treatment, refuse to transfer him to hospital, and prevent him from receiving necessary medication. This deliberate medical neglect places his life at imminent risk and amounts to a policy of slow, deliberate harm inflicted by prison authorities.
Waleed Abu Al-Khair was arrested on 15 April 2014, directly from inside the courtroom while attending one of his trial sessions, in a case whose hearings had begun in October 2013. According to his wife, human rights activist and former detainee Samar Badawi, his arrest was carried out under a detention order issued by the Minister of Interior pursuant to the January 2014 Counter-Terrorism Law—a vague and expansive law that has been systematically used to silence peaceful activists and human rights defenders.
Abu Al-Khair’s organised human rights work began in 2008, when he founded the Saudi Human Rights Monitor. Authorities refused to register the organisation and later blocked its website, prompting him to continue its activities through social media platforms, where it gained significant public attention inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
With the emergence of peaceful calls for reform and democratic change in Saudi Arabia in 2011, Abu Al-Khair once again became a leading figure in the human rights landscape due to his unwavering defense of activists and political detainees. In June 2012, he was charged with offences such as “disrespecting the judiciary,” “communicating with foreign organisations,” and “submitting petitions calling for the release of detainees”—charges that clearly reflect the retaliatory nature of the authorities’ actions against his peaceful advocacy.
In October 2013, Abu Al-Khair was sentenced to three months in prison on charges of “insulting the judiciary.” He was also briefly detained that same month for attending a meeting with reform advocates, before being released on bail. Three months later, Saudi authorities banned him from travelling to the United States to attend a human rights forum sponsored by the U.S. State Department—an early indication of the escalating campaign against him.
In June 2014, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced him to 15 years in prison, imposed a fine of 200,000 Saudi riyals, and banned him from travel for a further 15 years following his release. As with many cases involving prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia, the trial was marked by serious legal violations and a complete absence of due process.
In February 2023, Together for Justice received confirmed information that Waleed Abu Al-Khair was brutally assaulted inside his detention facility in Al-Saadiyah, by a group of criminal inmates acting on direct instigation by a police officer responsible for prison security. Instead of holding the perpetrators accountable, prison authorities placed Abu Al-Khair in solitary confinement, despite the fact that his injuries required immediate hospitalisation.
The prolonged imprisonment of Waleed Abu Al-Khair for more than eleven years stands as a stark symbol of the systematic repression of human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia and the state’s ongoing effort to silence those who advocate for justice, accountability, and fundamental freedoms.
Together for Justice stresses that the immediate and unconditional release of Waleed Abu Al-Khair is an urgent humanitarian and legal necessity. The organisation calls for guarantees of his physical safety, immediate access to comprehensive medical care, and the launch of an independent investigation into all violations committed against him, with full accountability for those responsible.
The release of Waleed Abu Al-Khair—and all prisoners of conscience—remains an essential prerequisite for any credible discussion of reform or stability. Defending human rights is not a crime, and continued repression cannot lay the foundation for a just or stable future.
