News / Underreported

Saudi secret courts

Thursday, 23 April 2020 12:18 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 23 April 2020 12:24 AM ]

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Saudi Secret Courts For a decade or so, Saudi Arabias Specialized Criminal Court has been used for muzzling critical voices in the peninsula.

The preys have been a raft of journalists, human rights defenders, religious clerics as well as political and womens rights activists. The trials have been unfair at best and the sentences usually long-term imprisonment and death. Since the emergence of Mohammed bin Salman as the Saudi Crown Prince, the court has come in full swing, striking terror into the heart of civil society.

The Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) came into being in 2008 as a tribunal for terror-related crimes. But as the widespread uprisings in 2011 began to rock the Arab world, the court became the main tool for silencing dissident individuals.

To begin with, the court tried a group of 16 Jeddah reformists and then anyone calling for their fundamental rights. The court treated all the peaceful political activists as terrorists using vague definitions of terrorism, terrorist crime and terrorist entity.

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