Tomorrow, Wednesday 23 November 2011, Dr Said bin Zair, laureate of the Alkarama prize for 2011, a reformer and a member of the political opposition, will stand before this same court after being detained for four years. Two of his sons, Mubarak and Saad, who have been detained in the same prison as him without ever being able see or meet with them, will also be presented before the Specialised Criminal Court. They will appear before the court without having had any previous legal proceedings or a clear charge, and without a lawyer to represent and defend them. Dr Zair's family were not formally informed of the date of the trial, but learned this through unofficial channels, since he has been denied visits for more than one and a half years.
Dr bin Zair, a well known Saudi recognised for his independent thinking and his public stances calling for reform, has previously faced arrests and long detentions, and has only enjoyed freedom for 39 months in the last 15 years. He was imprisoned more than 8 years between 1995 and 2003, and for a year between 2004 and 2005, because he exercised his right to free speech, particularly after he granted an interview to the Aljazeera Satellite Channel in 2004 in which he expressed his opinion about the political situation in his country. He was last arrested on 6 June 2007 on charges of committing terrorist acts without specifying the acts attributed to him. This is the standard accusation of the Saudi authorities against anyone who does not agree with the political views of and decisions by the authorities.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has previously issued Opinion No. 36/2008 on 21 November 2008 in favour of Dr Said Bin Zair, and Opinion No. 27/2007 on 28 November 2007 in favour of Dr. Saud Mukhtar Al-Hashimi, Sulaiman Al-Rashoudi, and their fellow detainees, condemning their arbitrary detention, and demanding that the Saudi authorities release them. These are just a few examples of this UN Working Group's decisions which condemn cases of arbitrary detention in Saudi Arabia, the country which was the subject of the greatest number of opinions from this working group among all the Arab countries.
Alkarama will urgently inform the UN working group, which is currently sitting in its sixty second session held today in Geneva, about these grossly unfair trials so that the necessary steps can be taken against the Saudi authorities who are simply trying to legitimise these detentions because of the increasing levels of local and international criticisms. The Saudi authorities have not spared from detention the young, the old, the disabled, women or men from all sections of society. Even very young children have been detained. The number of detainees is said, according to some estimates, to exceed twenty thousand, and the prisons struggle to accommodate such a large number of detainees.
The charges brought by the Saudi Authorities to opponents appear to be weak and ridiculous. For example, Mr Mikhlif Al Shammari, whose case Alkarama also submitted to the UN special procedures, will also stand before this same court which specialises in terrorist cases, but his initial charge after his arrest was "annoying others". How can he then stand before a court that specialises in terrorist cases? Alkarama wonders what charge the Saudi authorities will direct against the child, Adulrahman Al-Jazairy, who celebrated his fourth year in jail accompanied by his two minor sisters, Jana and Nammur.