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A Saudi court has sentenced tribal members to forcibly evicted to make way for the $500 billion Neom project.
Shadli, Atallah and Ibrahim al-Howeiti were arrested in 2020 for opposing the deportation of their tribe from participating in the project and were sentenced to death by Saudi Arabia’s specialized criminal court on October 2, according to the Middle East Eye . A permission group named Alqst.
“We condemn these sentences and demand their release,” Alqst tweeted.
Shadli al-Huweiti, brother of 43-year-old Tabuk resident Abdul Rahim al-Howeiti, was shot dead by Saudi special forces in April 2020 after protesting the government’s deportation order, including in videos he regularly posted on YouTube.
The death sentences for these men are just the latest in a string of extreme recent Saudi court rulings against those who have voiced dissent.
Meanwhile, Howeitat tribesmen have reported an escalation of activity by authorities pushing them off their lands for the flagship project – now the site of the 2029 Asian Winter Games announced this week.
Two other Howeitat members – Abdulilah al-Howeiti and Abdullah Dukhail al-Howeiti – were sentenced in August to 50 years in prison and a 50-year travel ban for supporting their family’s refusal to be evicted from their home in the kingdom’s Tabuk province.
Others sentenced to lengthy sentences include University of Leeds student Salma al-Shehab, mother of two, and Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, mother of five. They were sentenced to 34 and 45 years, respectively, for tweets critical of the Saudi government.
Writer, translator and computer programmer Osama Khaled was sentenced to 32 years in prison for “charges related to the right to freedom of speech,” Alqst said.
In a series of tweets, Adel al-Saeed, vice-president of the European Organization for Saudi Human Rights, said the new death sentence revealed how the death penalty “includes all forms of opposition to government decisions in an unprecedented way” of.
He added that the use of the death penalty as a political tool to subjugate citizens shows that the kingdom does not intend to reverse its use of the punitive death penalty.
“It also shows that (Crown Prince) Mohammed bin Salman sees the international situation and the need for energy as the appropriate environment to deliver his unjust verdict at the lowest possible cost,” he wrote.
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