“In collaboration with the Saudi Ambassador in Damascus Abdullah Al-Aifan, we have been striving to locate and learn the condition of Saudi citizens in Syrian prisons,” NSHR Chairman Mufleh Al-Qahtani told Arab News on Monday.

“We have received a number of complaints from the relatives of Saudis who traveled to Syria and then lost contact with their families.”

Al-Qahtani said a major problem faced by the NSHR was the difficulty in gathering information from Syria because of the current turmoil combined with the large number of prisons in that country.

“We have been trying to find out the state of Saudi prisoners in many countries. We suggested to the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she visited the NSHR to forge an agreement for the exchange of prisoners with her country. She welcomed the idea and promised to put the matter before concerned departments in the US,” he said.

Commenting on the achievements of the NSHR with regard to prisons in the country, Mufleh said the society had made remarkable progress in ensuring jail authorities provided good health care to prisoners and transferred inmates to less crowded prisons.

The NSHR also succeeded in convincing jail authorities of the need to help prisoners obtain documents that could potentially help them secure release, such as a bankruptcy certificate for a defaulting debtor in jail.