CAIRO: The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) expressed “great surprise” at the request of a Saudi Arabian judge at Diwan AlMazalem (Board of Complaints) from the defense team for Soliman Bin Ibrahim AlRashudi, a lawyer and former judge, to omit the word “constitution” from all defense requests, saying “you are affected by the West and Egypt as well and we are a country governed by Islamic Sharia.” The Saudi interior ministry arrested the human rights defender, a member of the Civil and Political Rights Association, in early February 2007, without charge or trial. He was kept in solitary confinement for 30 months, ANHRI said, “which made three reform lawyers file a case against the ministry of interior in August 2009 requesting the ministry to declare reasons for detention without trial or investigation all these years.” After five hearings, the Board of Complaints has sided repeatedly with the ministry of interior. “The ministry stalled on declaring arrest reasons or justifying solitary confinement. “On the other hand, Saudi press incited against defenders of Rashudi claiming that defending the accused in [the] political case is contrary to national sentiment.” Although the civil rights' advocator and former judge is in his 70s, “the ministry of interior did not hesitate to bargain and try to pressure him to retreat from submitting a prosecution request to the Board of Complaints against the investigation device regarding some reformers who were arbitrarily arrested without indictment or trial.” Rashudi was arrested one day prior to submitting the request. Since then, the interior ministry continues to detain him in what ANHRI said was a “solitary cell without investigation and refuses to release him unless he would sign a pledge not to defend arbitrary detention victims.” ANHRI Executive Director Gamal Eid said “it is no surprise that the ministry of interior would arrest lawyers and human rights defenders for doing their work and defending arbitrary detention victims. Yet it is rather an unprecedented failure of the judiciary in this state to cover up for the crimes of the interior ministry and that some judges would refuse using the expression ‘constitutional rights' under the pretext of abiding to the Islamic law, which is a law totally irrelevant to any tyrannical practices.” BM
