Human rights groups have announced that an activist has died in the prisons of the Saudi regime, after spending 15 years of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment.
The Sanad Organisation for Human Rights stated that human rights activist Musa al-Qarni died on Tuesday in the prisons of the Saudi regime at the age of 66, blaming the authorities for his death inside the prison.
Al-Qarni was a Saudi academic who was born in the Jizan region and obtained a doctorate degree in the field of religious jurisprudence from the Islamic University.
Musa al-Qarni The worked as a university professor and subsequently as lawyer. In 2007, he was part of a group of nine people who met at the behest of lawyer Issam Basrawi in order to discuss the project of establishing a human rights association concerned with spreading human rights awareness in Saudi Arabia. The projet was to be called the Peaceful Public National Assembly.
The meeting was intended to write a political reform document that would be presented to the king. However, security authorities raided the office and arrested all present, including Moroccan national Hassan al-Hussein al-Sadiq.
The Saudi authorities claimed that the arrested were members of a secret organisation with base of operations in the city of Jeddah, with the aim of “spreading chaos and gaining power with the help of outside parties.”
The Public Prosecution Authority in Saudi Arabia charged the detainees with 75 charges, and claimed that most of them were involved in establishing a secret organisation that aimed to seize power in the country.
In August 2010, the trials began after the defendants were transferred from al-Hair Prison in Riyadh to Dhahban Prison in the city of Jeddah. The trials lasted for a full year and exceeded forty sessions.
Musa al-Qarni spent the remainder of his life in prison, with activists claiming he was subjected to brutal torture.
Source: Al-Ahed News
