Taha al-Hajji

Opinion contributor

The executioner strikes without warning in Saudi Arabia. Prisoners are not told that their time is almost up, and their families receive no advance notification. The parents of young men on death row find out their sons have been killed via WhatsApp or Twitter, in a bland government news release announcing the regime’s latest bloodletting.

On April 23, I heard that my client Abbas al-Hassan was among 37 people who lost their lives in a mass execution. Most had been tortured into making false confessions. Several were executed for attending protests when they were children, labeled as terrorists for exercising their right to freedom of expression. Their true "crime" was to question the absolute power of the royal family. In Saudi Arabia, this can get you killed.

I would like to introduce you to two men: one living, one dead. Abbas is gone, his ordeal over, his family in mourning. Another of my clients, Ali al-Nimr, could be next, unless the U.S. government belatedly finds the moral courage to object. When I hear President Donald Trump boast of extracting the highest price for defending the Saudi dictatorship on the world stage, it does not fill me with hope.

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Abbas was arrested on his way home from work in 2013, without a warrant, and accused of spying for Iran. For almost three months, he was held in solitary confinement. His interrogators beat him while blindfolded and deprived him of sleep to extract a false confession. The charges, on a sheet 300 pages long, included high treason, spreading the Shiite faith, supporting protests and setting up an import-export business with Iranian contacts.

Ali was arrested in early 2012, at the height of the Arab Spring, during protests in Qatif. Officers smashed into him with their car as he was riding his bike and beat him so badly, he had to be taken to hospital. He was 17 years old.

Torture forced confessions

At first, the charges were minor. Ali was accused of organizing the demonstrations on his BlackBerry, taking photographs of the protests, explaining how to give first aid to protesters and repeating chants against the state. It was only later, after protests intensified in his absence, and his uncle, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was arrested, that he was charged with attacking police with Molotov cocktails.

The prosecutor did not claim Ali hurt anyone. But under torture, he also signed a confession, to crimes of disobedience, punishable by death.

Both Abbas and Ali were tried in the Specialized Criminal Court, nominally set up to hear terrorism cases but in practice used by the king and his crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to silence dissent. In this heavily fortified courtroom, hearings are held in complete secrecy. I represented Abbas and Ali, but was not allowed to speak to them to prepare a case. They told the judge of their torture and recanted their confessions, but they were sentenced to death regardless.

The harsh truth is that while the brazen murder of a journalist arouses international condemnation, and the imprisonment and torture of women’s rights activists is widely discussed, unlawful executions are reported as the routine workings of the Saudi ‘justice’ system. The U.S. State Department will not even condemn them, instead saying it urges the Saudi government to respect the very due process rights it consistently flouts.

While Saudi Arabia’s Western allies look away, the regime has concluded it can get away with violating multiple international laws. It executes juveniles, for nonlethal crimes, after trials that do not meet even basic standards of fairness, and the world shrugs.

Where is the US response?

What terrifies me is that there is nothing stopping them from executing Ali, and two others on death row arrested as teenagers: Dawood al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher. Abdullah was 15 when he was seized by police and beaten with metal bars. Fifteen. Dawood was 17 when he was tortured into signing a blank sheet of paper that became his confession.

The limited U.S. coverage of last month’s executions focused on Mujtaba al-Sweikat, a promising adolescent arrested at King Fahd International Airport in front of his family in 2012, on his way to Western Michigan University. Mujtaba had taken part in protests against the regime because “he believed that the society deserved more,” his mom said.

A handful of members of Congress condemned Mujtaba’s execution — Sen. Bernie Sanders, Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Debbie Dingell — but this is far too few, and the thought that it will stay the Saudi regime’s hand is laughable. It is not too late for Ali, Dawood and Abdullah, but it could well be, soon.

Unless there are real consequences, such as meaningful condemnation from the U.S. president or his secretary of State, and the withholding of aid and military support, Saudi Arabia will continue to kill teenagers for crimes of dissent. Their families will be the last to know.

Taha al-Hajji is a Saudi Arabian defense attorney. In early 2016, after representing several men killed in a mass execution, and fearing for his safety, he sought and was granted asylum in Germany.