Deteriorating health of a new prisoner of conscience due to torture in Saudi prisons
Human rights sources confirmed the transfer of Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Tarifi to Al-Hayer Hospital in the Kingdom due to his severe torture in Saudi regime prisons.
Sheikh al-Tarifi was taken to hospital after his health deteriorated so that he could no longer be kept in prison conditions.
The health deterioration suffered by Sheikh al-Tarifi is not new, but what is new is the serious worsening of his health.
The Saudi authorities arrested al-Tarifi and Islamic scholar Ibrahim al-Sakran in mid-2016 for objecting to Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 policy aimed at imposing heavy taxes on Saudi citizens and turning the country’s economy into an open market policy.
The “Detainees of Conscience” account, launched a campaign on the site “Twitter”, in order to pressure the Saudi authorities to release the detained sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Tarifi, and Suleiman Alwan.
Meanwhile, Abdullah al-Awda, son of prominent preacher Salman al-Awda, said the next hearing of his father’s trial may be the last, and has been scheduled for Thursday (October 3rd).
The Saudi regime held six court sessions in less than two weeks to Sheikh Salman al-Awda amid a complete change of the panel of judges and the prosecution offered a tweet from the al-Awda account as “evidence” against him.
Courts in the kingdom usually do not release much details of their hearings, do not broadcast them, and do not announce the names of defendants in cases.
The last tweet by Sheikh al-Awda before his arrest in September 2017 called for the unity of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) after nearly three months of the Gulf crisis and the blockade of Qatar, which provoked angry responses in the Kingdom against him.
Since early September 2017, the Saudi authorities have launched a sweeping campaign of arrests against the Awakening Movement, the country’s largest religious movement, involving around 20 people, and began arresting preacher Salman al-Awda and Awad al-Qarni, as well as dozens of preachers, journalists, and writers.
