COUNTRIES OF CONCERN: IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA

In Iran, mass protests began in September 2022 in collective action against the country’s compulsory head-covering laws and quickly expanded to articulate broader grievances and demands for fundamental political and social change. They have been met with a ruthless crackdown.

Authorities have gunned down over 500 protesters since the protests began in September 2022, and more than 18,000 people have been arrested and detained in overcrowded prisons and deprived of their due process rights. Iranian authorities sought the death penalty for at least 21 people in sham trials designed to intimidate people participating in the uprising, and two people were executed in relation to the protests in mid-December 2022. The release of detained protesters has been marred by suspicious deaths of several recently released detainees, which Iranian authorities have labelled as ‘suicides’ despite significant evidence indicating otherwise. The government also doubled down on the brutal suppression of the protests by disrupting internet and social media access.

In Saudi Arabia, HRDs continue to be targeted with judicial persecution. Many face extremely long sentences and many others continue to be sentenced, with recurring cases of enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention beyond the expiry of prison sentences becoming commonplace. Mohammed AlQathtani, co-founder of the now-disbanded Saudi Association for Civil and Political Rights, has been arbitrarily detained since 2013 in relation to his peaceful human rights work. AlQathtani’s sentence was supposed to end in November 2022 but he has been forcibly disappeared by Saudi authorities since October 2022. The authorities refuse to disclose any reliable information confirming his location, in what is believed to be retaliation to a complaint filed by his family about the repeated assaults he faced from other prisoners. Internet activist and aid worker Abdulrahman Al-Sadhan, who is serving a 20-year prison

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Regional classification sentence followed by a 20-year travel ban for exercising his right to freedom of expression, has not been heard from since October 2021. Al-Sadhan was deprived of access to legal counsel during a trial lacking in the most rudimentary of international standards on fair trials and due process, and Saudi officials continue to deny him calls and visits. In keeping with the worrying trend of detaining activists in prison beyond the expiry of their sentences, poet Ashraf Fayadh continued to be arbitrarily detained for an additional eight months after completing his eight-year prison sentence, before he was eventually released.

Other HRDs serving sentences in Saudi prisons include Lina Al-Sharif, who has been arbitrarily detained on false charges since May 2021 as a result of her social media activism. While still in detention, the authorities opened new terrorism-related investigations against her in 2022 because of her social media activism. Several other WHRDs received decades-long sentences in 2022, including a 34-year prison sentence handed down to Salma Al-Shehab and a 45-year sentence handed down to Nourah bint Saeed Al-Qahtani for their online activities.