Activism

Help End Beheadings: Updated

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Update, October 13, 2015: The £5.9 million contract between the Justice Ministry of the United Kingdom and its counterpart in Saudi Arabia, written about here two weeks ago, will be scrapped, according to British news sources.
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Saudi Youths Sentenced to Die: Updated 10/12

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

What is known is that as of today, October 12, ‪Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, a 20-year-old Saudi sentenced to death by beheading, has not been beheaded. His body has not been crucified and then displayed, which is the second horrifying part of his sentence. Because corporal and capital sentences in Saudi Arabia are usually implemented on Fridays—after public prayers—dread accompanies the approach of each Friday for friends and family of those sentenced, and then with the confirmation from Ali’s family that his odious sentence was not carried out, a tense non-relief follows. But he is not the only under-age prisoner in Saudi Arabia who has been sentenced to death by beheading.

The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) has been publicizing three stories: Ali al-Nimr’s and those of Dawood Hussain Almarhoon and Abedallah al-Zaher. All three were arrested before they were 18 years of age, all three have been held in prison since the arrests (each young man was arrested in 2012), and all three have been almost certainly tortured.

As of Saturday, Ali and the other teenagers were moved to the Saudi capital. No advance notice was given to their families, who learned about it after the fact. What this means or portends is not clear.

Ali’s father is quoted in tonight’s Guardian online as saying, “I’m very worried now because they’ve moved my son to a prison in Riyadh and he is in solitary confinement. I expect that this can only mean bad news and I fear he could be executed at any moment. Dawoud al-Marhoon also faces the same fate as my son, but so do six others. So in total there are eight young men who have been sentenced to death. My son is completely innocent.”
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Brave in the Face of Evil

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Bravery is a skill. I do not know if I have cultivated it in myself. Bravery is, of course, not what one does in the absence of fear but what one can do—what one actually does—when fear is present. [A comment: Today is June 6, 2016. I wrote this essay seven months ago. Sadly, the only update that can be provided is that all the parties described below are, simply, even more brave than they were several months ago.]

A young man sits today in a prison, awaiting a death sentence to be carried out, quite possibly this week. Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 when he was 16 or 17 years of age (both ages have been reported), making him a juvenile at the time of his arrest. He was arrested at a protest. His country is Saudi Arabia, and the protests in 2012 in other autocratic nations in that region had been effective in fostering No government likes protest; his government is violently allergic to it.

At trial, Ali was not given access to the “evidence” amassed against him, in no small part because there was no such evidence. A “confession” was extracted from him. He was convicted, and this is no joke, of stealing every gun and every uniform from a local police station, single-handed.

He was convicted and sentenced to death. Without informing him, an appeals court reviewed his case this summer and that court upheld his guilty verdict and death sentence. He and his family did not know about this until it was announced. He never mounted a defense. His country announced yesterday that this is an internal matter. (It is not, as his nation’s actions and threats of action contravene international agreements concerning human rights that it has signed, as well as simple decency.)

He is to be beheaded, and then his body is to be crucified and displayed to show the world, well, what official cruelty looks like. Of course, one doubts the crucifixion will be publicized, as even Saudi Arabia knows such a punishment is uncommon in the rest of the civilized world. But the display will communicate what a bloodthirsty, autocratic regime wants it to communicate … and to whom it wants it to communicate: future protesters.
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