The son of a prominent Saudi cleric, who is calling for his execution, was revealed to the agencyBloomberg”, how he escaped from the Kingdom, and applied for asylum in Britain, saying that his life was “threatened” by the Saudi authorities.
Nasser al-Qarni, the son of the preacher, Awad al-Qarni, said that state security officials in Saudi Arabia warned him of imprisonment or execution if he criticized the treatment of his father, Awad al-Qarni.
“In the era of Mohammed bin Salman, the situation in Saudi Arabia has changed really badly,” Nasser Al-Qarni, 24, said during an interview with “Bloomberg” in a central London hotel, and spoke through an interpreter. In expressing his opinion, he has two options, either to face imprisonment, possibly the death penalty, or to live with his mouth closed so that he cannot criticize anything or the authorities.”
Nasser confirmed that he traveled to London to seek asylum, raise awareness of the crackdown in Saudi Arabia and try to save his father’s life.
Young Nasser had posted a clip video Last Saturday, it was viewed 1.4 million times, in which he announced his escape outside the Kingdom and access to a “safe place” to “defend his father and detainees” in his country, and “to save what can be saved in his country.”
In the name of God ..
I am Nasser, my father is Dr. Awad Al-Qarni, the detainee whose execution the Public Prosecution is calling for, announced today in this video that I was able to leave the country and reach a safe place.
I went out to defend my father, and to save what could be saved in my country. pic.twitter.com/GU0b108eLC
— Nasser bin Awad Al-Qarni (@NasserAwadQ) October 1, 2022
Travel permit
Al-Qarni said he tried to demand the release of his father in Saudi Arabia and was interrogated by state security officials on several occasions.
“They wanted me to adopt their version of the story,” he added, adding that officials told him he was banned from leaving the country.
But he said that he was recently able to obtain a passport and fled the country without informing any of his family members, traveling first to Jordan, and then to London, where he arrived there in mid-September.
Sheikh Awad Al-Qarni was arrested in September 2017 for posting tweets on Twitter criticizing the Kingdom, as part of a campaign of arrests that targeted a number of intellectuals, preachers and activists, according to a message from the United Nations human rights envoys.
The foreign minister at the time, Adel al-Jubeir, said the prisoners, including clerics, academics and businessmen, “were pushing an extremist agenda.”
Al-Qarni’s arrest came after he retweeted a message to his two million Twitter followers in September 2017.
Al-Qarni was independent of the official religious establishment, a professor at two Saudi universities, and criticized the Saudi government’s arrests and travel bans on intellectuals, according to a letter written by a group of six United Nations human rights envoys in November 2019, which indicated concerns about his case and the prosecution’s demand that he and other prisoners be executed.
The Saudi authorities level several accusations against Al-Qarni, including “supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, incitement to fight in areas of conflict and sedition, incitement to offend leaders of other countries … and other accusations,” according to the Saudi newspaper, Sabq, which his son denied in the interview.
Many critics of the Saudi government face punishment for their use of social media platforms.
Last August, a Saudi PhD student, Salma Al-Shehab, was sentenced to 34 years in prison in Saudi Arabia for reasons related to her use of Twitter, according to the British newspaper The Independent.
A Saudi court had sentenced Al-Shehab, who is studying at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, on the grounds of owning a Twitter account, following her and interacting with the accounts of opponents and activists.
Salma, 34, had previously claimed that she had been mistreated and harassed while in detention, noting that at least five men had assaulted her “repeatedly” because she belonged to the Shiite minority in the kingdom.
According to Human Rights Watch, Al-Shehab was arrested in January 2021 after her return to the kingdom.
Bloomberg said it could not independently verify Nasser al-Qarni’s allegations of being threatened. Neither the Saudi foreign ministry nor its embassies in Washington and London responded to requests for comment.