The Saudi Arabian government is launching a sustained assault on human rights under the guise of combating terrorism. That acusation is made in a report released Wednesday by Amnesty International. The measures adopted in the country after the 9/11 attacks have, according to Amnesty, made an already dire situation worse. 

A Saudi Arabian princess has just been granted asylum in the United Kingdom after bearing an illegitimate child with a British man. She would, she said, be stoned to death if forced to return. The case is one of a small number of asylum claims brought by Saudis that have been handled secretly by the British authorities. To acknowledge such claims would, according to diplomats, amount to open criticism of the Royal House of Saud and the country's strict Sharia laws.

Iceberg
But a high-profile case like this is just the tiny tip of a very large iceberg according to Amnesty International. Today the organisation publishes a comprehensive report into the deterioration in human rights in the country since 2001.
 
"Please do not abandon us to the claws of tyranny and blind power", the report quotes an anonymous woman. "I fear for myself, my children and especially for my husband, who is in detention. I don't know what has happened to my husband, where he is, or what will happen to him. As for my children and for me, without him, we are the living dead. Please help me to get my husband justice. I beg of you in the Name of Allah".
 
Torture
That's one of the many pleas Amnesty International has received from the families of those who have fallen foul of the Saudi Arabian authorities. The report details thousands of arrests, torture of detainees, deaths in suspicious circumstances and summary trials held in secret. 'And all in the name of security' according to Lamri Chirouf, one of the report's authors.
 
"One primary reason has been the introduction or adoption of anti-terrorism measures since 2001, which are void of any international human rights safeguards", he says:

"So people are detained, in secret places for months without their families knowing where they are, then they are held without trial or charge for years, never knowing what's going to happen to them. And those who may be brought to trial, they are invariably convicted after secret and summary trials about which very little is disclosed."
 
Terrorism
Given Saudi Arabia's history of terrorist attacks, Amnesty acknowledges that the country has not just the right, but a duty to protect its citizens. But the human rights' organisation is concerned by the scale of the arrests and detentions compared to eight years ago.
 
"Prior to 2001, the number of people detained did not run more than a few hundreds", says Mr Chirouf. "But the ministry of interior's statistics themselves, released in 2007, said that they had arrested 9000 people between 2003 and 2004, and that 3000 of those were still detained without trial. Different sources think that that number must be at least twice that. At least. The secrecy is such that only the Ministry of Interior knows how many people are being detained and denied their fundamental human rights."
 
Criticism
The problem, according to Mr Chirouf, is that Saudi Arabia's anti-terrorism laws are too wide and too ill defined. He refers to a number of cases documented in the report of known human rights' activists who have detained simply for criticising the laws.
 
"They are held because they said even those suspected of terrorist crimes have the right to fair trial, have the right to know when they will be released. The measures adopted in Saudi are so vague, the law defines the crime of terrorism in a manner that would make me an offender for speaking like I am now to you. That would be considered support of terrorism, or I'm a terrorist myself."

Safeguards
The United Nations has established a framework for fighting crimes of terrorism which incorporates human rights' safeguards. Saudi Arabia's laws incorporate none of these safeguards, says Mr Chirouf. And given the country's position on the UN Human Rights' Council it should not be treating suspects the way it has been doing for the past eight years.

Original photo of Riyadh - adapted by RNW - by jonrawlinson on Flickr - under CC licence.