Malik Al-Dwish has been behind bars since September 2022 for demanding to know the fate of his father

Malik Al-Dwish remains imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since September 2022 for demanding to know the fate of his father, Sheikh Suleiman Al-Dwish, who has been forcibly disappeared since April 2016.

The Saudi judiciary has sentenced him to 27 years in prison, while human rights sources indicate that the Saudi authorities intend to retry Al-Dwish, in a concerning context that points to repeated practices of retrying opinion detainees in Saudi Arabia.

It is noted that Malik was arrested in July 2022 and was released in August of the same year; however, this freedom lasted only one month before he was re-arrested. His arrest followed a video he shared asking why his father had disappeared for five years and why they were prevented from communicating with him, and why he had not been presented for any trial. Malik had previously explained that the reason for his father’s arrest was a tweet about the dangers of spoiling children and not holding them accountable, which the authorities considered a reference to Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

SANAD Organisation for Human Rights previously revealed that Malik Al-Dwish was subjected to brutal torture to extract confessions about the details of his video broadcast on an American channel. Investigators then used unethical and illegal methods, including administering drugs used for such inhumane tasks, which caused the victim to reveal many details of events unconsciously. Al-Dwish confessed to all the details of the published video and his contact with activists abroad to help disseminate it in the media and exert international pressure for his father’s case. They then requested that he record these confessions from the same location where he recorded the first video and to record another video stating that his father had contacted them from Syria, informing them that he was well, after which contact was lost. They promised to release him if he complied.