![]() ![]() Although he has languished in pre-trial detention for more than three years, Saudi Arabia executed a record number of people in 2019. ![]() He was arrested only hours after he tweeted a message to his 14 million followers calling on Saudi Arabia to end its blockade of the tiny Gulf Emirate of Qatar, Alaoudh says. election campaign rhetoric, he says, “but what I’m sure of is that a Biden Administration would not be as compliant and affectionate with Saudi Arabia as Trump has been.”Īl-Odah is one of hundreds detained or imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for activism of criticism of the government. ![]() Alaoudh is wary of reading too much into U.S. “I hope a new administration that signals a new approach to Saudi Arabia can really ask for the release of political prisoners,” says Alaoudh, whose father, the reformist Muslim scholar Salman al-Odah was arrested in September 2017 and faces the death penalty. On the other is Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who last year said he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah,” singled out the kingdom for “murdering children” in Yemen, and said there’s “very little social redeeming value in the present Saudi leadership.”įor some, like Alaoudh, those words offer a glimmer of hope that relatives detained in the kingdom might have improved prospects of release should Biden win in November. On one side is an incumbent who has boasted he “saved ass” from recriminations over his alleged role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. For dissidents living outside the Kingdom, the American election has personal as well as political implications. Online trolls are far from alone in keeping close tabs on the Nov. ![]()
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