Humanitarian activist Abd al-Rahman al-Sadhan entered his third year under forced abduction in the Saudi regime prisons, while his detention continued to be arbitrarily and without legal justification.
Since his arrest, the Saud authorities have allowed Al-Sadhan only to contact his family once, amid escalating demands for his freedom and the freedom of all prisoners of conscience.
Yesterday, Twitterers launched a campaign on Twitter in solidarity with Al-Sadhan amid a great reaction to demanding his release.
On March 12, 2018, a Saudi force kidnapped Al-Sadhan from his workplace in the Red Crescent in the capital, Riyadh, and his phone was seized before he was transferred to an unknown location.
His neighbors reported the next day that they saw a group of men in police uniforms enter his home by force and then left the house, loaded with his electronic devices and personal belongings.
One of the prisoners in Dhahban prison stated that he saw al-Sadhan inside the detention center in October 2018.
More than a year after his disappearance, the Al-Sadhan family spoke of the circumstances of his disappearance and his detention in the Kingdom’s prisons.
In his first interview to shed light on the case, his sister, “Areej”, said that the family assumes that he is one of dozens detained by the Saudi authorities, and that the family received an unknown call days after his disappearance that officials believed to be from the secret police arrested Al-Sadhan from the Red Crescent offices in Riyadh, where he was working.
She pointed out that the last words Al-Sadhan said to his family were “I love you, my mother”, then the contact was lost and they did not hear about him for a whole year, and he refused his requests to visit and did not even know the reason for his arrest or the charges against him.
His sister Areej said that the family believes in freedom of expression and we know that whoever lives in the Kingdom must be careful and therefore my brother would not have spoken publicly, but we believe and we are not sure that he may have expressed his views on social media, or between friends and in some way this has put him in trouble.