Tahira Bashir: A Pakistani citizen and the wife of a Pakistani detainee in Saudi Arabia
My husband, Muhammad Bashir, has been sentenced to fifteen years in Saudi Arabia. We used to talk to my husband in prison on a daily basis, and he was the one who called us without us being able to contact him, but a few days ago we lost contact with him after a call by a prison employee to tell us that he had been taken and that it is necessary to pray for him today, which confirms that his execution is very close.
I shared the verdict with my husband, but I was released five years later, so we have hope that Muhammad Bashir will also be released.
We are oppressed, we are not criminals, we were deceived. We have asked the Saudi authorities to check our records in Pakistan without getting a response.
The story took place in the year 2016. We received a call from an unknown woman. She told us she would send us to Umrah for free, claiming she was working with an organization that organizes free Umrah packages for families. She took advantage of our desire to perform Umrah to lure me, my husband and my two children into the scheme.
We thought they were a legitimate organization after they issued our passports, and after getting the visas they told us they had bought our tickets within a few days so we were so happy. We left our house, and when the organization's members received us, they said that some documents needed signatures. We were alone and they didn't let anyone join, and we ended up in Peshawar.
Two days later, they showed us the heroin that we were going to smuggle to Saudi Arabia. They threatened us and our children, so we had no choice but to carry out their requests. They watched us inside the airport, and prevented us from speaking to anyone. They did not catch us inside the Pakistani airport, but we were arrested after we arrived at Jeddah airport.
In Jeddah, my husband, my children, and I were separated from each other and taken to different places. My husband has been there for seven years, I have stayed for five years, and my children for three years are in a separate place from me.
My children returned to Pakistan after the intervention of the Pakistani embassy, and today we have no choice but to raise our voice through human rights organizations, in our last attempt to save my husband from the death penalty.
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*كلمة طاهرة بشير (مواطنة باكستانية وزوجة معتقل باكستاني في السعودية) في المؤتمر السنوي الثالث لضحايا الانتهاكات في المملكة العربية السعودية الذي عقد بتاريخ 9و 10 ديسمبر 2022.