(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Unnamed Saudi activists were also quoted in 2011 by news agencies as saying that the number of political prisoners was estimated to be at over 30,000.
"No one can say any true numbers, because we have many secret prisons in Saudi Arabia and they are under the control of the Ministry of Interior," said Waleed Abu al-Khair, head of the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, during a brief phone conversation with al-Akhbar.
We are afraid, because for the last two years many people were against us. His father and my family threatened us and said they wanted to take the children away.
Information on prisoners is highly restricted, not only for Saudi nationals desperately trying to find out about imprisoned relatives and friends, but also for various international human rights organizations. It is an opaque and willfully obscured subject.
This is particularly true when examining prisons directly under the control of the Saudi Ministry of Interior - the mabahith, or secret police, prisons.
One infamous secret police prison is al-Hayer. It is Saudi's largest prison complex, 25 km south of Riyadh. Last year, hundreds of Saudi families gathered in the last year to protest the detention of individuals and to demand access to them.
While it is common knowledge that political, economic, and social freedoms are significantly limited and harshly suppressed within the Wahhabi kingdom, international and regional diplomatic circles rarely challenge Saudi Arabia over its repressive policies.
The substantial silence toward the kingdom is prevalent, so much so that in effect it can escape with committing numerous violations of international norms and conventions. It is a rare privilege granted to only a handful of states.
As Saudi Arabia is aggressive playing a lead role in criticizing other states in the region for their own acts of repression, questions arise regarding the growing domestic repression - one that has been intensified over the past year.
Following the Numbers
Today, the only documentation on prisoners, especially those arbitrarily arrested and are placed within the secret police's jails, comes directly from the Ministry of Interior. The ministry had set up a website called, Nafethah, in which relatives of the detained can check on the status of prisoners and allegedly are able to send messages to them.
According to Nafethah, the Saudi authorities admit to holding 2,365 prisoners.
"When we saw these lists by Nafethah, we have many names that are in prison and weren't there," Abu al-Khair claimed. Attempts have been made to contact the Saudi Ministry of Interior in regards to the availability of documents regarding prisoners. There has yet to be a response at the time of this writing.
According to Abu al-Khair, there are three types of prisoners in Saudi today: "reformers," or those who ultimately seek a transition into a constitutional monarchy; human rights defenders; and finally, and perhaps more controversial, political religious figures suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda and other organizations that directly challenge the state.
"They [the Saudi authorities] always talk about terrorists. They never say they arrested reformers or human rights activists," he said.
Abu al-Khair, 33, is a Saudi activist who began challenging the system when he founded his group in 2007. Because of the nature of his work, Abul Khair has been slapped with a travel ban and is under investigation by the authorities for "insulting the judicial system and damaging the reputation of the kingdom."
A large number of those currently in prison were incarcerated since 2001, and especially during the brewing troubles in 2003 when Saudi Arabia was facing a very low-level insurgency and in response unleashed a wave of mass arrests and arbitrary detainment. Many were held for years with no word given to their families.
However in 2008 and 2011, the process evolved to include criminal courts, a prisoner reform program, and recently new the introduction of anti-terrorism laws. This new draconian system was implemented vigorously against those who organized or were involved in the demonstrations that erupted in neglected Eastern Province, especially in the urban district of Qatif, and elsewhere in the past two years.
In the course of this summer alone, seven Saudi activists have been sentenced to five to ten years in prison for expressing themselves on social media sites like Facebook.
This is in addition to the prison sentences given to prominent human rights defenders such as Mikhlif bin Daham al-Shammari, Abdulkareem Yousef al-Khoder, Raif Badawi, among others. Not to mention the dozens of others arrested for protesting over the issue of prisoners in mid-July. However, these are prisoners that have been spotlighted.
Furthermore, at the end of August, Human Right Watch, reported that Saudi authorities have been refusing to register local Saudi human rights groups, which basically leaves activists open to prosecution.
What is a "Prisoner of Conscious"?
"They [the Saudi authorities] do not make that distinction between reformists or terrorists," Sevag Kechichian, researcher for Amnesty International's West Gulf team, said.
Like Abu al-Khair, Kechichian noted the example al-Hayer, where reformists and activists are placed side-by-side with mentally disturbed, drug users, convicted militants, and other alleged criminals. Thus, an act that is political is conflated with mental illness, or worse - an act of "terror."
"You can't really know because of the lack of a clear distinction between criminal and political actions. Secondly, this has been going on for over a decade. People have disappeared for over a decade, and their families have tried protesting and many were forced to shut up. There is harsh repression of any form of protest or even when someone just asks where their relative is in prison," he added.
The biggest wrinkle in Saudi's peculiar context is the immense incorporation of religion in society and the political infrastructure.
"There are two types of authorities here, the religious and radical judges. Some of the people believe in the religion and confuse these men with it," Abu al-Khair said.
In effect, judges and their judgement are laced with holy and sacred connotations, backed by a divine will and suggests that certain forms of dissent is a blasphemous act.
The case of Raif Badawi, a Saudi blogger and creator of the Free Saudi Liberals website, is indicative of this point. He was arrested in mid-2012 and was charged with "insulting Islam." At the end of this past Ramadan, after Badawi was passed back and forward between the different courts, the judges sentenced him to seven years in prison and 600 lashes.
"Raif was not against religion or the government. He was for liberal interpretations of the religion," his wife, Ansaf Badawi, told al-Akhbar.
This cover allows Saudi authorities to act with great impunity, shrugging off most criticisms that do come their way - and even beyond its detainment practices, seeping into how it handles itself other sectors such as social and economic issues.
Ansaf was forced to leave Saudi Arabia and move to Beirut because of the intense pressures she faced by the government and family over her husband's case.
"We are afraid, because for the last two years many people were against us. His father and my family threatened us and said they wanted to take the children away. We get no help from any NGOs or organizations inside Saudi. They are not interested in issues that deal with religion," she said.
Al-Akhbar attempted to contact the Saudi Human Rights Council, a government-affiliated human rights organization, regarding Badawi's case. There has been no response to date.
Ansaf is barely in contact with her husband. All she knows is that he is in the Briman prison close to Jeddah, a prison that sparked outrage after leaked images and videos showed horrendous living conditions and is startling over crowded.
Following his 2012 arrest, Amnesty International designated Badawi a "prisoner of conscious" and has repeated called for his immediate release. The call has so far been ignored by the Saudi authorities.
The "So What?" Response
What adds to the uncertainty of prisoners is the lack of access granted to the UN organizations and other NGOs by the authorities since Saudi Arabia is not a signatory to the major treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture.
But the largest factor in giving Saudi Arabia the ability to continue its practices of repression arises from the political cover it has internationally.
"This year, there were a lot of trials for human rights and political activists, and the US only commented on a few. The state department spokesperson did not condemn, the official only expressed ‘concern,'" said Adam Coogle, a Human Rights Watch research charged with covering Jordan and Saudi Arabia. "To get [the US] to express anything publicly is a coup as far as I'm concerned. And the EU isn't any better."
Kechichian said, "We all know why. It's the oil, the regional influence, its close alliance with the West since the Cold War. That's largely why it is untouchable."
This cover allows Saudi authorities to act with great impunity, shrugging off most criticisms that do come their way - and even beyond its detainment practices, seeping into how it handles itself other sectors such as social and economic issues.
To illustrate this point, one only has to watch a September 2001 interview with Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi ambassador to the US.
When asked about the issue of financial corruption in Saudi Arabia, he responded:
There are so many countries in the Third World that have oil that are still 30 years behind. ... What I'm trying to tell you is, so what? We did not invent corruption, nor did those dissidents, who are so genius, discover it. This happened since Adam and Eve. ... I mean, this is human nature. But we are not as bad as you think.
Just like financial corruption, there is a sense of the "so what" mentality regarding the topic of detainment. And this mentality will likely continue to exist in the minds of Saudi authorities as long as the Wahhabi kingdom is not held to account.
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