LONDON – Two British human rights lawyers said on Tuesday they will ask forSaudi Arabia to be suspended from the UN Human Rights Council over 61people “arbitrarily detained or disappeared” by the country’s authorities.
Ken Macdonald and Rodney Dixon said in a statement that they will submittheir report to the Council in Geneva on Wednesday, stating that the 61arrests were “in breach of both Saudi and international law”.
The report will accuse the authorities of “targeting human rightsactivists, political dissidents and others merely exercising their right tofree speech.” It will also say the arrests carried out in September 2017are “part of an ongoing, established and long-running pattern ofabuse” by SaudiArabia link> .
The report says that the wave of arrests started on September 10 whenprominent clerics including Salman al-Awdah and Awad al-Qarni were detainedin an apparent crackdown on dissent.
“There are credible reports of mistreatment and torture during theirdetention,” they said. The report concludes that thelink> link>link>UN link> GeneralAssembly “must urgently consider” suspendingSaudi Arabialink> ‘s membership of the HumanRights Council under a resolution that allows this in case of members thatcommit “gross and systematic violations of human rights.”
Despite Saudi claims of reform, Amnesty International has said that thehuman rights situation has “deteriorated markedly” since Mohammed binSalman took over as crown prince and heir to the throne in June 2017.
The human rights group said earlier this month that Awda had beenhospitalised after almost five months in solitary confinement. He wasarrested shortly after posting a tweet welcoming reports of a possiblereconciliation betweenSaudi Arabialink> and neighbouring Qatar.
Dozens of Saudi citizens have been convicted on charges linked to dissentand under the country’s sweeping cyber crime law, particularly linked toposts on Twitter. Saudi Arabia link> andits allies cut off all diplomatic and economic ties with the emirate inJune last year accusing it of links to extremists, a charge Doha hascategorically denied.
Saudi Arabia link> has also come underfire, including in Britain, over the war in Yemen, which thelink> link>link>UN link> says hassparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.