Analysis: The Saudi Justice System and Human Rights | Al Jazeera English

Saudi Arabia has temporarily released three of the women's rights activists held in custody for almost a year, state media has said, following a court hearing in which the detainees alleged torture and sexual harassment during interrogation.

At least 11 activists were arrested last May in a sweeping crackdown on campaigners just before the historic lifting of a decades-long ban on female motorists.

In a separate development on Thursday, a United Nations human rights expert said that Saudi Arabia should hold public trials for those accused of killing Khashoggi in order for the judicial process to be credible.

Al Jazeera's Senior Middle East Analyst Marwan Bishara talks about the two issues.

Opinion: My Father Faces the Death Penalty. This Is Justice in Saudi Arabia.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The kingdom’s judiciary is being pushed far from any semblance of the rule of law and due process.

Despite the claims of Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his enablers, Saudi Arabia is not rolling back the hard-line religious establishment. Instead, the kingdom is curtailing the voices of moderation that have historically combated extremism. Numerous Saudi activists, scholars and thinkers who have sought reform and opposed the forces of extremism and patriarchy have been arrested. Many of them face the death penalty.

Salman Alodah, my father, is a 61-year-old scholar of Islamic law in Saudi Arabia, a reformist who argued for greater respect for human rights within Shariah, the legal code of Islam based on the Quran. His voice was heard widely, partly owing to his popularity as a public figure with 14 million followers on Twitter. » | Abdullah Alaoudh | Mr. Alaoudh is a legal scholar at Georgetown University. | Wednesday, February 13, 2019

FRANK GAFFNEY: New York Times Endorses 'Eye for an Eye' Approach

The New York Times' Ben Hubbard on Tuesday wrote a glowing piece of puffery focused on Saudi Arabia, titled "Saudi Justice, Harsh but Able to Spare the Sword." In it Mr. Hubbard admits that the kingdom's harsh punishments, including beheadings and amputations, are based on the shariah (Islamic law) and are viewed as unchangeable and derived…

No Justice for Women or Foreign Workers in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabian Preacher Who Beat His Five-year-old Daughter to Death Is Jailed for Just Eight Years and Sentenced to 600 Lashes

MAIL ONLINE: Lama al-Ghamdi's back was broken and she had been raped and burned / She died in October 2012 from her injuries after ten months in hospital / Her father Fayhan, a prominent Islamist preacher, admitted beating her but was originally freed after agreeing to pay £31,000 compensation / A campaign succeeded in bringing about a stiffer sentence

A Saudi Islamic preacher accused of torturing his five-year-old daughter to death has been sentenced to just eight years in jail and 600 lashes.

Lama al-Ghamdi died in October 2012 having suffered multiple injuries. Her skull was crushed, a finger nail had been pulled off, her ribs and arm broken and she suffered extensive bruising and burns.

There were also reports that she’d been repeatedly raped, though this was denied by her mother.

The case sent shockwaves around the world earlier this year and there was further outrage when it appeared that her father, Fayhan al-Ghamdi, would be released by a Saudi court after just a few months in prison.

The mother, Syeda Mohammed Ali, told CNN in February: 'My dear child is dead, and all I want now is justice so I can close my eyes and know she didn't die in vain. She was brutally tortured in the most shocking ways.' » | Ted Thornhill | Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Beheading for Islamic Pilgrim?


Question About Saudi Justice


Related:

Saudis Display Their Barbaric, Dark Age Credentials! >>> | Thursday, April 01, 2010

Justice Shari’ah-Style
DAILY MAIL: When a teenage girl was gang raped in Saudi Arabia,a court sentenced HER to 90 lashes. After she complained,it was increased to 200. Now, the victim speaks for the first time...

She was only 19 and a new bride when it happened.

Seven men held her at knifepoint and, for a number of hours, she was subjected to a horrific gang rape.

But when she later went to the authorities, they sentenced her to 90 lashes.

She complained in the media, so the punishment was increased to 200 lashes and imprisonment.

Her lawyer has been suspended for speaking out against it.

Too outlandish to be true? Well, these are the bare facts of the so- called "Qatif girl" case, which has become a cause celebre among Western liberals and in Saudi Arabia, the West's most important Middle Eastern ally.

Earlier this week, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, declared that what had happened was, indeed, an "outrage".

But he did not mean that the rape victim had suffered a gross injustice.

No, only that criticism of his country was a foreign conspiracy.

The plight of the anonymous victim has served to cast an embarrassing light on one of the world's most authoritarian and oppressive regimes.

Specifically, it has exposed the power of a judicial system based on the Sharia law of the extreme Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam and its appalling treatment of women and persecution of religious minorities.

International pressure to clear the young woman is growing.

Now, as one Saudi judge who might well hear her latest appeal declares that she should have been sentenced to death, the victim's voice has been heard in public for the first time.

The pressure group Human Rights Watch has just released a transcript of an interview which the Qatif girl gave to one of its workers.

Her account reveals the horrific details of the original ordeal and how, having gone to the police, she was abused and demonised by the Saudi judicial system. My harrowing story, by the teenage girl who was sentenced to 200 lashes after being gang raped in Saudi Arabia >>> By Richard Pendlebury

Mark Alexander