(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the Saudi Consultative Council (Majlis Al-Shoura), RSF has called for the immediate release of journalist Saleh Al-Harith, aged 34. Al-Harith was arrested in April 2000 in the city of Najran, and is presently detained at the prison in Dammam, in the country’s east. “This journalist has been unfairly jailed […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the Saudi Consultative Council (Majlis Al-Shoura), RSF has called for the immediate release of journalist Saleh Al-Harith, aged 34. Al-Harith was arrested in April 2000 in the city of Najran, and is presently detained at the prison in Dammam, in the country’s east.
“This journalist has been unfairly jailed for nearly three years,” said Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general. “His only crime was to inform a foreign media outlet of certain abuses committed by the Saudi authorities. For the first time, an international human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, has been authorised to carry out an investigation in the country. It is time for the Saudi authorities to demonstrate their sincere commitment to human rights,” Ménard added.
Confrontations in April 2000 between members of the Ismaeli minority and the police left one person dead and several police officers injured. Al-Harith, who worked for the Saudi newspaper “Al-Yaum”, had contacted Al-Jazeera television by phone on 23 April 2000 to report the police attack on the Al-Mansoorah mosque in Najran. The journalist, who is of Ismaeli faith, was reportedly arrested in late April 2000 and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.
The Ismaelis, a Chiite minority group that is persecuted by the kingdom’s Wahhabite authorities, form a large community in Najran. There are no official statistics on the number of Ismaelis in Saudi Arabia. According to diplomats, there are several tens of thousands, most of whom live in the mountainous regions of the south-west.
