RIYADH: Commenting on sentences against 330 detainees announced recently by the Ministry of Justice, the president of the governmental Human Rights Commission (HRC), Bandar Al-Iban, said that the procedures used in these trials, including the right to legal representation and appeals, shows that the justice system in the Kingdom is working within the framework of international treaties that the Kingdom has signed.
“This shows that the Kingdom’s judiciary is following the various Saudi regulations, most importantly the criminal proceedure system and international charters that guarantee the rights of the accused in order for them to get fair justice,” he said.
Al-Iban also said the HRC is following up with lawyers with regards to the case of the Saudi citizen detained in Israel, Abdul Rahman Al-Atwi.
Al-Iban said that Al-Atwi’s case is in the center of the attention of three specialized bodies, the ministries of interior and foreign affairs. However, the president added that working on a sensitive case like this requires a lot of quiet negotiations.
An avid outdoorsman, Al-Atwi was on a hiking trip in 2005 in a remote part of the Sinai Peninsula. He climbed a low fence, but — because there were no signs in this remote part of the world — he didn’t realize it was an international boundary separating Egypt’s Sinai from Israel’s Negev Desert.
He was arrested by Israeli border patrol. After his arrest, an Israeli court sentenced him in 2005 to three months in jail for illegally crossing into Israel. He’s been there for over four years because Israel and Saudi Arabia lack the diplomatic relations that would facilitate deportation, and no country has stepped up to be the intermediary in such an exchange. Al-Atwi was initially to be handed to a third country after he completed his three-month jail sentence so he could be sent back to Saudi Arabia. However, UN efforts to hand Al-Atwi to a third party have been unsuccessful. Five countries — Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Finland and Sweden — have declined to get involved.
Al-Iban confirmed that the HRC is following up on all cases concerned with citizens inside and outside the Kingdom according to well-studied plans. The HRC president also confirmed that the HRC’s doors are open to all citizens and cases as a part of the King’s instructions toward national dialogue.
The HRC, according to Al-Iban, had received until now approximately 4,000 cases, some were solved and others were referred to officials.
