The detained Saudi academic and activist, Mohamed Al-Qahtani, continues his hunger strike for the third consecutive day, protesting the ill-treatment he is being subjected to in prisons.
Al-Qahtani is one of the founders of the Association for Civil and Political Rights in Saudi Arabia (ACPRA), and a human rights defender for decades. He was close to the late Saudi academic Abdullah Al-Hamid, who died in April 2020 as a result of ill-treatment in Saudi prisons.
Maha Al-Qahtani, the wife of Mohamed Al-Qahtani, explained that the reason for her husband’s strike was “ill-treatment, depriving him of his books, which has been in their possession for nearly a year, and withholding my phone number so that he cannot contact us,” noting that the authorities are holding, next to her husband, a number of “psychiatric patients who need hospitals, not prisons.”
This is not the first time for Al-Qahtani to go on hunger strike, as he had been on a hunger strike last December protesting against the same reasons he is suffering from now.
The Saudi authorities had arrested Al-Qahtani, who was working as a professor of economics at the Institute of Diplomatic Affairs at the Saudi Foreign Ministry, in mid-2012, for his human rights activities.
In March 2013, a Saudi court sentenced him to 10 years in prison, followed by another 10 years of the travel ban.
Saudi Arabia has imprisoned hundreds of detainees for reasons related to freedom of opinion and expression since Prince Mohammed bin Salman became the crown prince in 2017.
Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) had repeatedly called for the release of prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia.
AOHR UK called on all activists, writers, and journalists defending human rights and human rights organisations to prioritize the issue of detainees in Saudi prisons and to put pressure on the Saudi authorities to immediately release all prisoners of conscience, especially those who suffer from serious health conditions.
