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Saudi forces threaten Hamas officials’ wife, daughter-in-law with deportation to intimidate, silence family

Thursday, 22 April 2021 3:36 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 22 April 2021 5:50 PM ]

Imprisoned high-ranking Hamas official Muhammad al-Khudari (Photo via Twitter)

An independent human rights organization says Saudi regime forces have raided the house of a senior official of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement in the kingdom, Muhammad al-Khudari, and arrested his wife as well as his daughter-in-law.

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, in a post published on its official Twitter page, announced that the regime forces raided Khudari’s home in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, and took his wife Wijdan, 70, and his daughter-in-law – the wife of his imprisoned son Hani – to a security center.

علم المرصد الأورومتوسطي أن قوات الأمن السعودية اقتحمت منزل المعتقل الفلسطيني محمد الخضري (83 عامًا) في #جدة اليوم، واقتادت زوجته "وجدان" (70 عامًا)، وزوجة نجله "هاني" لأحد المراكز الأمنية، واحتجزتهما عدة ساعات قبل أن تخلي سبيلهما بعد توقيعهما على تعهد بعدم الحديث حول حالة المعتقل pic.twitter.com/KlquH65ZxO
— المرصد الأورومتوسطي (@EuroMedHRAr) April 20, 2021

According to the monitor, both women were detained for hours, and forced to sign a pledge not to say anything about the health and incarceration conditions of their jailed husbands before they were released.

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor added that Saudi security officers interrogated Khudari’s wife, violently ransacked the family house and filmed it before confiscating her cell phone.

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The Saudi regime forces also threatened Wijdan to deport her and her entire family, and informed her of the Riyadh regime’s annoyance at the family’s appeals for the release of Khudari and his son.

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor later denounced the Saudi security authorities over storming Khudari’s home, describing such a practice as “a new attempt to intimidate and silence his family.”

“Forcing the family into silence or threatening deportation is both immoral and illegal. All concerned parties must intervene to stop these aggregated violations against the prisoner and his family,” the human rights organization said.

Khudari and his son Hani were arbitrarily arrested on April 4, 2019 and remained in detention without charge until March 8 last year.

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.

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A month into the senior Hamas official’s detention, his wife received a phone call from authorities in the maximum-security Dhahban Prison near Jeddah requesting his medical records. Two weeks prior to his arrest, Khudari had undergone surgery.

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.

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