Arrest of Saudi Christian Draws Continued Concern
A Saudi national who recently converted to Christianity was arrested by religious police in the town of Hufus, a Washington D.C.-based human rights organization reported on Wednesday.
A Saudi national who recently converted to Christianity was arrested by religious police in the town of Hufus, a Washington D.C.-based human rights organization reported on Wednesday.
According to International Christian Concern, 30-year old Emad Alaabadi was arrested while driving his child home from school on Nov. 29. After he was escorted home to drop off his children, Alaabadi was imprisoned in the town of Hufus. Since then he has been transferred to a prison in Jeddah, ICC reported.
In a telephone conversation with her imprisoned son on Dec. 4, Alaabadi’s mother in Australia reported that he sounded very weak. “If Emad’s case is like others, he has probably been tortured as the religious police attempted to reconvert [him] to Islam,” ICC stated.
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The organization added, “We are also getting a report that Emad was not the only Saudi Christian arrested. We understand that there were 304 others arrested [in connection] with Emad’s case.”
“We will report their names as they are received,” ICC reported.
Alaabadi’s arrest is “only the latest example in a long history of a Saudi zero-tolerance policy toward other faiths,” ICC said, adding that it “only reinforces the State Department’s naming Saudi Arabia as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’.”
This year, Saudi Arabia was classified as a “country of particular concern” for the first time in the U.S. annual report on international religious freedom. Under U.S. law, nations engaged in violations of religious freedom deemed “particularly severe” are designated as “countries of particular concern” or CPCs.
The State Department, which released the 2004 report on Sept. 15, said that Saudi Arabia has engaged in “particularly severe violations” of religious freedom.
According to the report, freedom of religion does not exist in Saudi Arabia and is not protected under the country’s laws. It also says that those who do not adhere to the officially sanctioned strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia can face “severe repercussions” at the hands of religious police.
The department said the government of Saudi Arabia, which declares Islam as the official language and requires all citizens to be Muslims, prohibits public non-Muslim religious activities. “Non-Muslim worshippers risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation, and sometimes torture for engaging in religious activity that attracts official attention,” the department said in September.
ICC strongly recommends that concerned individuals contact the Saudi embassy to voice their concerns and ask for the release of Emad Alaabi. “Concerned individuals should also contact their elected representatives and ask them to voice their concern regarding the Saudi’s complete lack of religious freedom,” the organization stated.
