UN calls on Saudi Arabia to release a prisoner of conscience from Eastern Province

International human rights organizations have called for intensifying efforts to pressure the Saudi authorities to release prisoners of conscience who are detained over demanding their fundamental freedoms.

 The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published on its website on the social activist, Hussein Yousef Al-Sadiq, who is from Tarut Island in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

Hussein, aged forty years, was organizing religious and cultural events, activities and lectures in Qatif. He was summoned to the Tarut police station and was arrested without an arrest warrant on false charges.

In 2018, Hussein was sentenced to ten years in prison, and in 2021 and after the appeal, he was sentenced to 13 years.

 The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights had revealed that the Saudi authorities had issued a verdict to kill fifteen prisoners of conscience, bringing the number at risk of death to fifty-three, including at least eight minors.

The organization warned that the Saudi authorities would commit a mass massacre against dozens of detainees.