The world marks the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on June 26 each year, which is the day the Convention against Torture and other cruel and inhumane treatments enter into force.
Despite Saudi Arabia’s ratification of the Convention in 1997, the crime of torture continues to be systematically practiced in its prisons and detention centers, in a way that victims cannot seek redress from the torturers and refuses to investigate the torture allegations made by many prisoners.
In contrast to the convention, which does not allow confessions extracted under torture, because they are made by unfree will, Saudi courts consider statements made by the tortured detainees legitimate and cannot be challenged, and they impose unjust sentences, that may reach execution, based on these statements.
⁃ Torture Environment in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia adopt measures that create an ideal environment for torture in its prisons, in contrast to the domestic and international laws that make it difficult to commit this crime, if the laws are fully implemented.
1- Solitary Confinement:
According to international law, a prisoner should only be held in solitary confinement under special circumstances and for a short period of time and without prejudice to his fundamental rights, such as his right to communicate with a lawyer.
However, Saudi Arabia uses solitary confinement as a routine, basic procedure for an open period that has no legal end, with all basic prisoner rights revoked, making it easier for interrogators to torture detainees. For example, the detainee, Sheik Samir al-Hilal, has been kept incommunicado in a solitary cell since December 2015. Until the writing of this report, his family knows nothing about the charges against him.
According to dozens of official documents issued by Saudi courts, reviewed by the organization, dozens of detainees said they were tortured in solitary confinement in order to force them to sign declarations written by or distorted by the interrogators.
2- Denial of Access to a Lawyer:
Article 4 of the Saudi Law on Criminal Procedure states: “Every accused person shall have the right to seek the assistance of a consultant or lawyer to defend him at the investigative and court stages.”
Saudi Arabia strips the accused of this inherent right in order to create an ideal environment in which the interrogator can torture the accused. Although the right to a lawyer is written in the Saudi regimes, the organization has not yet found a single case in which the defendant was granted this right during the investigative period.
Dozens of torture victims in the Specialized Criminal Court said that their investigation was based on torture. In addition, in some cases, investigators tend to put the defendant in a special room and suddenly, a number of masked men beats him up as a way of forcing him to make certain confessions.
3- Not Separating between Investigation Organs and Detention Organs:
The separation between investigation organs and detention organs helps reduce the likelihood of torture crimes. Article 13 of the Law on Criminal Procedure states that: ” Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution shall undertake the investigation and prosecution according to its rules and regulations.” However, according to the organization’s ongoing monitoring of cases of opinion-makers and protesters, most have been interrogated in General Intelligence Directorate (GID) prisons buildings by GID officers, who use torture extensively.
Although this procedure makes the statements obtained by the GID illegal, the Specialized Criminal Court refuses to accept appeals by the defendants’ lawyers, which makes it clear that the court is not independent and is subject in its work to the political decision that uses the judiciary as a means of suppressing dissent and opinions.
Many victims said that their interrogation sessions were conducted for long hours after midnight.
4- Forcing Victims to Certify their Statements Before the Trial:
The Saudi courts rely primarily on defendants’ pretrial statements, often at a time when the detainee is deprived of all his rights, including his right to a have lawyer. Article 108 of Law on Criminal Procedure states that: “Confessions must be made before the judge during the proceedings. The adversary’s confession – whether he is questioned or not – is a mere argument, and the confession must be made before the judge during the proceedings related to the incident in question.”
But Saudi Arabia devised a method of extracting confessions through torture before trial, in order to make the presence of a lawyer in the court useless.
Mustafa al-Darwish, who was executed by Saudi Arabia in June 2021 on non-serious charges (some date back to when he was a minor), confirmed that he was forced to endorse his statements, but the judge did not heed his words and he sentenced him to death.
⁃ Detention Centers and Prisons:
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: Torturers must never be allowed to get away with their crimes, and regimes that enable torture must be dismantled or changed. However, in Saudi Arabia, there is a deliberate lack of accountability for the investigators involved in torture crime, in order to consecrate this crime and use it as tool in its prisons. Furthermore, a torture victim may be arrested if he or she calls for accountability. On 1 July 2018, Saudi Arabia arrested activist Khaled Al Omair, after he filed a complaint in the Royal Court against those responsible for torturing him while serving an eight-year prison sentence for “breaking the law”, over his intention to participate in a pro-Palestine protest.
In Saudi Arabia, the lack of transparency along with the absence of civil society and the arrest of human rights defenders and activists prevents having accurate figures of torture victims.
Also, complaints against the torturers cannot be tracked officially. The cases documented by the European-Saudi Organization for Human Rights have made it clear that protecting the torturers from accountability is an official policy.
— Detention Centers and Prisons:
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights has monitored violations against victims of torture from the moment of arrest. Enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention remain a systematic practice to which the detainee is subjected immediately. Enforced disappearances and solitary confinement are a precursor to torture in most cases, in which detainees get tortured during the first hours of detention.
The torture practiced in detention centers and prisons has led to the deaths of a number of detainees without investigation, including the young man Makki al-Areed. The European-Saudi organization has also monitored a number of deaths in prisons as a result of torture and its subsequent effects or unclear prison conditions.
⁃ Judiciary
Legal provisions allow confessions obtained by torture to be accepted, which is reflected in various articles of the Law on Criminal Procedure, including article 161 which provides for the use of confessions in criminal trials if the judge considers them to be true.
Based on that, judges in Saudi Arabia have issued harsh judgments, including death sentences, based on confessions extracted under torture. Saudi Arabia has executed individuals who were tortured during the past years, including 37 people in April 2019, collectively, including minors such as Abdul Karim al-Hawaj and Mojtaba al-Suwaykat. And lately, on June 15, 2021, the minor Mustafa Al Darwish was executed on confessions obtained under torture.
currently, dozens of detainees are at risk of execution despite the confirmation of torture. Among them is the minor Abdallah al-Huweiti, who after his case was referred to the Supreme Court despite his confirmation that he was tortured and he named the government officials who tortured him.
Sheik Salman al-Awda, who the prosecution is still determined to execute, is still being treated in a cruel and degrading way in prison.
In 2020, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights reviewed 110 cases of torture victims in Saudi Arabia and found that at least 41 people had filed complaints before the court about torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments.
Many said that interrogators threatened them with bringing their relatives (including their wives, children, and mothers) to prison if they refused to sign the records previously written by investigators.
Instead of investigating the allegations and ignoring the confessions obtained under torture, the judges in many of these cases ruled harsh sentences without reviewing the torture allegations. The organization also monitored cases in which the judges pointed out that if they didn’t admit the confessions they would return to investigation and be tortured again, which force the defendants to confess.
In 2011, Saudi Arabia arrested human rights defender Khaled al-Omair, a day after he had declared his intention to protest against the Israeli aggression on Gaza. The Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh has sentenced him to eight years in prison for ‘acting against the Crown Prince’. After his release, he reportedly complained to the Royal Court about the torture he had suffered while in prison. On 5 July 2018 he came to the General Directorate of Investigations to follow up on the complaint about which he received no response. The next day he was arrested and new charges were fabricated against him.
In February 2021, the Saudi government released human rights defender Loujain al-Hathloul after nearly three years in detention. Al-Hathloul, along with other activists at their first trial, confirmed that they were tortured with electric shocks, flogging and sexual harassment. Instead of interrogating those accused of torture, in August 2019 the Saudi government blackmailed al-Hathloul, offering to release her in exchange for a video denying she had been tortured, which would then prevent her from making a complaint. The Court of Appeal then dismissed al-Hathloul’s complaint and is still banning her from traveling and from speaking publicly about what she has been through, raising fears that she could be re-arrested.
- Presidency of State Security:
In June 2017, a royal order was issued that established the Presidency of State Security and said it is concerned with all matters related to state security, and it is directly linked to the Prime Minister (the King). According to the royal order, the Presidency of State Security took over counter-terrorism and intelligence functions at the Ministry of Interior. Articles 4 and 5 of the law give the Public Prosecution and the Presidency of State Security the power to detain individuals without judicial supervision, ban them from traveling, surveillance their communications and confiscate their assets.
In addition, the General Directorate of Investigations (GID), which is responsible for prisons, is now under the authority of the Presidency of State Security. The GID prisons are responsible for arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and torture. So, the Presidency of State Security is now directly responsible for these practices, which have increased in recent years.
Days after the Supreme Court in Riyadh confirmed that Mustafa al-Darwish’s case had been transferred to the Presidency of State Security, his death sentence was carried out despite being a minor and despite the fact that his trial violated several conditions of justice. This shows that the Presidency of State Security is implementing unfair provisions.
On the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the organization sees impunity in Saudi Arabia as a legitimate legal practice protected by the regime’s highest officials, which leaves no prospect of reducing torture.