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Famous Saudi political inmate goes on hunger strike again to protest dire jail conditions

Tuesday, 10 August 2021 1:05 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 10 August 2021 1:32 PM ]

Imprisoned Saudi political activist Mohammad Fahad Muflih al-Qahtani

A notable Saudi Arabian political activist and academic goes on hunger strike again in the kingdom’s captivity to protest dire imprisonment conditions.

Mohammad Fahad Muflih al-Qahtani’s wife wrote in a tweet that the activist had started the protest action on Tuesday.

Qahtani is the co-founder of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, a human rights organization. The economics professor has earned a reputation as one of the Saudi Arabian judiciary’s “most eloquent and fervent critics.”

Qahtani’s spouse described maltreatment on the part of Saudi authorities, including denying him access to his books for a year and preventing contact between him and his family members, as the reasons behind his protest measure.

She said the authorities had thrown him in prison alongside a number of people suffering from mental conditions “who need to be hospitalized rather than imprisoned.”

The 55-year-old activist was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to 15 years in jail.

Qahtani began a hunger strike together with 30 others in the kingdom’s infamous maximum-security Ha’er Prison last September.

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The protest action fell short of making the authorities stop their abuse of the inmates.

His conditions have given rise to a social media storm among his sympathizers, who have been urgently demanding that Saudi officials end the situation facing him and countless other human rights campaigners.

The kingdom, which boasts about subscribing to the radical Wahhabi ideology as its official school of thought, has attracted notoriety far and wide over its intolerance of dissent.

Riyadh has even manipulated its so-called counter-terrorism law to prohibit any sort of popular opposition to the state and its actions.

The news concerning Qahtani’s situation emerged amid frequent reports pointing to Saudi officials’ unashamed execution of domestic activists, many of whom happen to face the measure at a young age.

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