Hawzah News Agency - Amnesty International has called on Saudi Arabia's King Salman to order the withdrawal of charges leveled against a high-ranking official of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas and his son, saying they have been both subjected to grave violations of human rights.
The London-based human rights group said on Monday that 81-year-old Dr. Mohammed al-Khudari and his son, Hani, have endured various forms of mistreatment, including enforced disappearance, arbitrary arrest, and incommunicado detention in solitary confinement.
Amnesty highlighted that the two Palestinian nationals have not had any legal representation since their arrest more than a year ago.
“We call on King Salman to order the dropping of baseless charges against Dr. Mohammed Khudari and Hani, and their release,” the group demanded.
They were arbitrarily arrested on April 4, 2019 and remained in detention without charges until March 8 this year, when they were brought before the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) in the Saudi capital, Riyadh as part of a mass trial of 68 individuals on trumped-up charges under the so-called counter-terror law.
Both men were forcibly disappeared for one month after their arrest, and held incommunicado and in solitary confinement for the next two months of their detention.
A month into the senior Hamas official’s detention, his wife received a phone call from authorities in the maximum security Dhahban Prison near the Red Sea port city of Jeddah requesting his medical records. Two weeks prior to his arrest, Dr. Khudari had undergone surgery.
Dr. Khudari is currently being held in al-Hai’r Prison in Riyadh, while his son is detained in Dhahban Prison.
Khudari has been living in Saudi Arabia for over 30 years, and represented Hamas between mid-1990s and 2003 in Saudi Arabia.
His son is a university professor and has no political affiliation.
On March 22, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political bureau, in a letter addressed to the Saudi monarch pleaded with him to make a quick decision and order the freedom of Palestinian detainees in Saudi prisons.