Due process: KSA urged to ensure fair trial for Pakistanis

Family members of several Pakistanis jailed in Saudi Arabia staged a protest demonstration in front of LPC

LAHORE:

Family members of several Pakistanis jailed in Saudi Arabia staged a protest demonstration in front of Lahore Press Club on Thursday accusing the kingdom of denying them a fair trail. The protesters, including women and children, demanded justice and chanted slogans against the Saudi government. The Justice Project Pakistan had organised the demonstration.

“I am protesting the arrest of my son who has been in a Saudi jail for three years,” one of the protesters said. She said her son, Muhammad Shafique, had gone looking for a lucrative job in Saudi Arabia but he was arrested owing to a fraud by his travel agent. She said the Saudi authorities had accused him of carrying narcotics and awarded him death sentence. “In the start of 2016, Saudi Arabia has executed 47 people on a single day… through beheadings or using a fire squad,” the JPP said in a statement. It said that those executed included Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia cleric sentenced to death in 2014 on terrorism charges. “International law, accepted as binding by Saudi Arabia, provides that capital punishment may only be imposed following trials that comply with the stringent requirements of a fair trial and due process, or could otherwise be considered an arbitrary execution,” the JPP said. “It is evident that no such precautions have been taken. The hangings are draconian, with the state giving no information on the actual crimes committed.” JPP Executive Director Sarah Belal said, “The trial and execution of al-Nimr had exposed the Saudi justice system for the sham that it is.” She said the Saudi state thought little of judicial independence and due process.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 8^th, 2016.