Young Mustafa Al Darweesh faces the threat of execution at any moment after his final death sentence was transferred from the Supreme Court to the head of state security. Months ago, Al Darweesh faced an unknown fate after the case was referred to the Supreme Court and he did not get confirmed information on whether the verdict was approved.
Al Darweesh (19 September 1994) was arrested on 24 May 2015 at Al Mabahith prison in Al Dammam and faced charges, including to when he was a 17 -year- old minor. Al Darweesh was placed in solitary confinement and severely tortured by beating, insults, threats and bearings on sensitive places of his body, which led to him losing consciousness several times. Under torture, Al Darweesh’s confessions were extracted, and he admitted them to the judge because of fear for his life after the investigators threatened to continue torturing him if he refused to testify.
After two years of detention, in 2017 Al Darweesh was transferred to the Specialized Criminal Court, where he was charged with several offenses, including participating in the shooting of security officers, and participating in demonstrations and gatherings, burning tires, covering up wanted persons, and storing what would disturb the country’s security on his phone. Among the charges brought were participation in the demonstrations of 1433, when he was 17 years and two months old.
Al Darweesh didn’t get a lawyer. His father defended him after attending the first hearing of his trial in August 2017, in which public prosecution asked for Hirabah execution.
Despite Mustafa Al Darweesh’s assertion that the confessions were extracted from him under torture, and despite the defects contained in the evidence of the lawsuit, and despit he was a minor, he was sentenced to Tazir execution in March 2018. Later on, the appeals court confirmed the case and referred it to the Supreme Court where the family has no access to information.
In March 2020, a royal order was published upholding the moratorium on executions of minors and apply the Juveniles law 2018 which prohibits the issuing of death sentences against minors and anyone faced charges while he was a minor, and replace them with imprisonment. The official Human Rights Commission later announced applying the royal order to a number of minors but did not address the case of Al Darweesh, who is facing a final death sentence.
According to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, Al Darweesh case confirms that Saudi Arabia’s claims of enforcing the Juvenile law and abiding by its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibit the issuance of death sentences against minors. It also shows Saudi Arabia’s violation of the convention against torture and other cruel treatment, which it had ratified, prohibits relying on confessions extracted under torture and requires interrogation of those accused of torture offenses.
ESOHR asserts that the refusal of Saudi authorities including the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal to provide the family with information about the current situation violates their right of knowledge, and as a condition of a fair trial is that “the family of any person suspected or convicted of committing a major crime has the right to visit him, and they shall also obtain information on the conduct of judicial proceedings and the fate of clemency petitions.”
ESOHR confirms that the sentence against Mustafa Al Darweesh, is an unjust sentence based on crimes that are not of the most serious and should be overturned immediately, first as a minor at the time of some of the charges he faced, and second as a result of the lack of justice at trial and the refusal to investigate allegations of torture against him.
ESOHR assured that the lack of transparency in the Saudi government’s handling of the execution file raises fears that there may be more detainees, including minors, facing the risk of being killed. And this undermines all propaganda attempted by the Saudi government, especially in the execution files.