A prominent Saudi scholar Safar bin Abdulrahman al-Hawali, who has been detained since 2018 and suffers from a complete disability, has been subjected to solitary confinement.
This was revealed bya group of UN disability rights experts on Wednesday, May 15, in a public report.
The expert committee’s statement came after it reviewed a complaint filed by al-Hawali’s nephew, in which he said that his uncle had been arrested since 2018 “as punishment for peacefully criticizing the Crown Prince, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom”.
In a statement, Markus Schafer, a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) said, “Over the past six years, al-Hawali has experienced numerous human rights violations, including forced disappearance, arbitrary detention, denial of due process, health deprivation, and acts of torture or inhuman treatment.”
The committee further said that al-Hawali “suffers from permanent impairments as a result of strokes, which have impacted his communication, mobility, and self-care ability.”
It explained that “he is unable to speak, understand or move independently, and his pelvic fracture and kidney failure require regular medical care.”
The committee called on Saudi Arabia to promptly review al-Hawali’s case to ensure a fair trial or release him. It also urged the state to cease any reprisals against al-Hawali and his relatives, emphasizing the importance of preserving civic space for criticism of state institutions.
Born in Al-Baha, Saudi Arabia, al-Hawali holds a bachelor’s degree in Islamic law from the Islamic University of Madinah and a master’s and Ph.D. in Islamic theology from Umm Al-Qura University.
76-year-old al-Hawali gained prominence in the early 1990s as a key figure in the Sahwa movement.
Al-Hawali was imprisoned in the early 1990s for criticizing the close relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US during the Second Gulf War, which resulted in Iraqi forces being expelled from Kuwait.
In 1994, he was arrested again and served a five-year sentence. In 2018, authorities arrested him, his sons, and brother after al-Hawali published a 3,000-page book on Muslims and Western Civilisation.
