Amnesty International
Saudi
Arabian writer Dr Zuhair Kutbi has been sentenced to four years in
prison on charges related to his peaceful activism. He is at risk of
torture and other ill-treatment and is in need of medical attention. He
is a prisoner of conscience.
Dr Zuhair Kutbi
was sentenced on 21 December to four years in prison by the Specialized
Criminal Court (SCC) in Riyadh, followed by a five-year ban on overseas
travel, a fine of 100,000 Saudi Arabian riyals (about US$26,600) and a
15-year ban on writing and giving interviews to the media. The court
also ordered him to erase his social media accounts. It suspended two
years of his four-year sentence because of his health, but indicated it
would reimpose them if he “offended” again.
The
SCC, a notoriously abusive counter-terrorism court, found Dr Zuhair
Kutbi guilty of violating Saudi Arabia’s counter-terror law, the Law for
Crimes of Terrorism and Its Financing, and Article 6 of the Anti-Cyber
Crime Law by “inciting public opinion”, “sowing discord” and “reducing
people’s respect of the rule of law”.
It
is believed that he was arrested on 15 July because of comments he made
on 25 June on the TV show Fi al-Samim (To the Point), on the Rotana
Khalijia satellite channel, in which he criticized political repression
in Saudi Arabia and argued for reforms such as transforming the
country’s political system into a constitutional monarchy.
Since
his arrest, he has been held in three different detention centers,
where he has been interrogated and is thought to have been ill-treated.
He is currently detained in the Mecca General Prison. He is in need of
medical attention as he is recovering from an operation to remove a
tumor, and has diabetes and high blood pressure.
