HRW: Saudi Arabia bans prominent cleric’s family from travel

The Saudi authorities have imposed a travel ban on 17 members of the immediate family of the prominent cleric, Salman Al-Awda, who has been held by the kingdom for about four months without a charge, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported yesterday.

The rights organisation quoted one of Al-Awda’s family members as saying that he had discovered that he was banned from travel while attempting to leave the country. He added that the immigration officer told him that the state royal court itself had imposed the travel bans for “unspecified reasons.”

Al-Awda was among the first of dozens of dissidents, writers, and clerics detained in mid-September in a state-led crackdown against those it described as “acting for the benefit of foreign parties against the security of the kingdom and its interests.”

Since his arrest, the state authorities have neither questioned nor charged Al-Awda, and have held him in solitary confinement without any contact to the outside world. Yet, Al-Awda was allowed only one 13-minute call in October, according to his family.

Read More: Saudi Arabia releases detainees held in corruption probe

Al-Awda’s family believed that he is being held over not complying with a state order from to tweet a specific text to support the Saudi-led isolation against Qatar. Instead, on 9 September, he posted a tweet the second part of which stated: “may God harmonize between their hearts for the good of their people,” an apparent call for reconciliation between the Gulf countries.

The New York-based organisation also noted that Al-Awda’s brother, Khaled, was detained by the authorities after he tweeted about his brother’s detention.

“There’s no justification for punishing family members of a detainee without showing even the slightest evidence or accusation of wrongdoing on their part,” HRW’s Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said, warning that the “Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s efforts to reform the Saudi economy and society are bound to fail if his justice system scorns the rule of law by ordering arbitrary arrests and punishments.”

Since 2011, the Saudi courts have convicted at least 25 prominent activists and dissidents. Many of whom have faced 10 to 15 years-long imprisonment sentences over accusations that included “breaking allegiance with the ruler, sowing discord, inciting public opinion, and setting up an unlicensed organization.”

Moreover, the kingdom carried out another wave of arrests in early November against people they accused of corruption and held many, arbitrarily, at five-star hotels until they agreed to turn over assets to the state.