human rights defender

Waleed Abu Al-Khair

Actions and Campaigns

Urgent support needed

Waleed Abu Al-Khair suffers from diabetes, which is a chronic condition that requires a special diet and certain medications. He has been denied medical care.

Organization affiliation

  • Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia

HRD's year of birth

1979

HRD's Gender

Man

Type of HRD

  • Lawyer

HRD's thematic area of engagement

  • Civil and political rights

Current Status

In prison (sentenced)

HRD's bio and work

Abu Al-Khair is a prominent human rights lawyer and founder of the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. He has been a fierce advocate for democratic reforms in the country and provided legal representation for many victims of human rights abuses. He received several awards in the field of human rights, including the Olof Palme Award in 2012, the Right Livelihood Award in 2018 and the American Bar Association 2019 Human Rights Award. Abu Al-Khair’s advocacy for human rights has also been recently recognised by the Anna Dahlbäck’s Memorial Fund Award 2024.

Detained since

Apr 15, 2014

Charge(s)

  • Creating disturbances

Sentence

15 years in prison

Latitude: 21.853334330937034

Longitude: 39.13411062220247

Geolocation of detention

Country or area of detention

Region of detention

  • Asia: Western Asia

Location of detention - City/Town

Jeddah

Location of detention - Facility

Dahban prison

Allegations / reports of ill-treatment

Waleed Abu Al-Khair has been repeatedly subjected to several forms of ill-treatment and abuses in prison. Abu Al-Khair was a victim of torture, beatings by inmates, solitary confinements, sleep deprivation, restricted visits, denial of proper food, medical care, and books. This frequent mistreatment caused Abu Al-Khair to go on several hunger strikes over the last few years with partial response to his demands.

Recent case update / evolution

Abu Al-Khair was sentenced to 15 years in prison, followed by a 15 year travel ban. The court found him guilty on six charges: seeking to remove legitimate authority; harming public order in the state and its officials; inflaming public opinion and disparaging and insulting judicial authority; publicly slandering the judiciary, distorting the kingdom’s reputation, making international organizations hostile to the kingdom, and issuing unverified statements that harm the kingdom’s reputation and incite against it and alienate it; founding an unlicensed organization; and violating Saudi Arabia’s anti-cybercrime law. Abu Al-Khair was the first human rights advocate to be tried at the then newly-established Specialised Criminal Court that was tasked of ruling on terror-related crimes but often used to imprison human rights defenders.

On 12 March 2024, the Saudi authorities refused a hospital transfer for Abu al-Khair, denying him access to medical care.

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