'Saudi Arabia’s treatment of activists may be torture’

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON (AA) – Saudi Arabia’s treatment of detained rights activists could amount to torture, a senior British lawmaker said Monday.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Crispin Blunt, Conservative MP and chairman of the Detention Review Panel (DRP), said the panel of MPs and senior lawyers asked for Riyadh’s cooperation as it examines widespread concerns over the detention of Saudi Arabian women’s rights activists.

Blunt said the Saudi authorities failed to respond to their two formal requests to visit the activists.

The DRP named eight female as well as four male activists who are under detention.

“Our conclusion is that, on the weight of the available evidence, it is almost certain that allegations of mistreatment of these detainees are true,” he said, reiterating the DRP’s findings.

The DRP said in a report Monday that activists are subjected to torture and kept in cruel and inhumane conditions in Saudi Arabia.

“There are reports of a Saudi prosecution process into their mistreatment,” Blunt said, but “the allegations could amount to sustainable allegations of torture, which is of course a crime of universal jurisdiction”.

Blunt underscored that a “not very open and transparent” trial process is going on in Saudi Arabia regarding the case of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

However, he said the murder of Khashoggi needs to be seen alongside the detention of these detainees and many other democracy and human rights activists in Saudi Arabia.

“All taken together, they send a relentless message that there is no space in Saudi Arabia for an active civil society.

“If you close down that civil society space and no one dares say anything because they might meet the fate of Jamal Khashoggi or these female human rights activists…what message does that send?

“And if you close down any space for discussion…and criticism of your policies, then beware what is going to happen to your government eventually at the hands of your people.”

He said in the meantime, a state of terror will exist in that public space in Saudi Arabia.

“It is very important that we engage with Saudi Arabia to encourage them to replace and put right what went wrong in 2018.”

- Khashoggi killing

Saudi Arabia came under fresh scrutiny last week after it refused to cooperate with the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

The UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner said last week that an international investigation would "review and evaluate, from a human rights perspective, the circumstances surrounding the killing of Khashoggi".

The UN team completed a five-day fact-finding mission in Istanbul to investigate Khashoggi’s death but failed to gain access from Saudi officials to their consulate building where Khashoggi was killed by a hit squad sent from Riyadh last fall.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that he cannot “understand America's silence when such a horrific attack took place, and even after members of the CIA listened to the recordings we provided".

"We want everything to be clarified because there is an atrocity, there is a murder," Erdogan said, speaking to Turkish broadcaster TRT, calling the killing "not an ordinary one".

Khashoggi, a contributor to The Washington Post, was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 last year.

After producing various contradictory explanations, Riyadh acknowledged he was killed inside the consulate building, blaming the act on a botched rendition operation.

Turkey has sought the extradition of the Saudi citizens involved in the killing as well as a fuller accounting of the killing from Riyadh.