Recently, the Saudi judiciary is relying on toughening sentences against opponents and activists. The latest information received from Saudi Arabia indicated a remarkable amendment to the unjust sentences issued against detainees, and many of them were tightened to the level of execution, after being imprisoned for not a few years.
Other leaks also reported that the presidency of the Specialized Court of Appeal ordered the new judges to toughen the sentences of detainees, and those who did not comply would be replaced immediately. All of this is taking place in the shadow of complete international silence that allows the authorities to oppress and abuse them as they wish and decide, without accountability or oversight.
According to the latest data, the Court of Appeal resorted to a retrial against former convicts to issue harsh retaliatory sentences against them, as happened with the religious scholar Sheikh Abdul Latif Al-Nasser, who has been detained since 2019.
A few days ago, the Court of Appeal sentenced Al-Nasser to 35 years in prison and banned him from traveling for a similar period after overturning the previous ruling of 8 years in prison, which means that Sheikh Al-Nasser will be more than 90 years old upon his release from prison, according to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights.
In another harsh ruling, the Specialized Appeals Court last week upheld the murder of a minor, Jalal al-Labbad, who was arrested in 2017.
In parallel, the accounts of prisoners of conscience and the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights on Twitter revealed that some members of the Al-Huwaitat tribe had been subjected to arbitrary death sentences.
The account confirmed that the Criminal Court issued arbitrary death sentences against both Atallah Musa Muhammad Al-Hwaiti, brother of the wife of Abdul Rahim Al-Hwaiti, who was killed by the Saudi security services while defending his land and home from demolition, and Ibrahim Saleh Abu Khalil Al-Hwaiti, cousin of the martyr Abdul Rahim Al-Hwaiti.
Last September, the Specialized Criminal Court issued an unfair ruling for 50 years in prison against two Al-Huwaitat tribes, on the grounds of their refusal to forcibly evict the houses of Al-Huwaitat in Tabuk Governorate.
So far, the number of Al-Huwaitat tribe detainees has reached 26 detainees inside Saudi prisons. They were accused of resisting the regime seeking to displace them by force in favor of building the city of dreams for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the shore of the Red Sea, or what has become known as the city of “NEOM”.
For its part, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights confirmed that the Saudi authorities have carried out, since the beginning of this year, 121 executions, 81 of which are part of a mass execution, the largest in the history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The organization pointed out in a statement that Saudi Arabia has recorded record numbers during the past ten years, as it carried out more than 1,100 executions from 2013 until this October, more than 990 of which were carried out during the reign of King Salman bin Abdulaziz, which began in early 2015.