News - Middle East: The Saudi Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has been accused of covering up the enforced disappearance of a human rights activist, highlighting its role as a government tool to conceal severe violations.

The wife of leading Saudi human rights defender Mohammed al-Qahtani has issued a statement categorically denying a Saudi official’s claim that he was recently in contact with his family and accused the state-backed Saudi Human Rights Commission of covering up violations by the authorities, including al-Qahtani’s ongoing disappearance. 

ALQST and MENA Rights Group stated that this cover-up was typical of the SHRC’s role in whitewashing the Saudi authorities’ egregious human rights record, and called for an end to this abusive practice.

Mohammed al-Qahtani, a founding member of the now-dissolved Saudi Association for Civil and Political Rights (ACPRA), has been forcibly disappeared since October 23, 2022, after completing a 10-year prison sentence for acts that fall under his right to freedom of expression. The Saudi authorities have failed to clarify his fate and whereabouts, with his case pending before the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances since November 2023.

SHRC President Hala al-Tuwaijri recently told US diplomats that al-Qahtani was in contact with his family and had spoken to them on the phone in recent days, and denied that he was in a state of enforced disappearance.

On learning this, al-Qahtani’s wife, Maha al-Qahtani, responded with a statement on behalf of the family in which she said al-Tuwaijri’s version of events was “utterly untrue”, and that her husband was not in contact with the family but remained forcibly disappeared. She called on the SHRC and al-Tuwaijri to disclose al-Qahtani’s fate and whereabouts and to ensure he can communicate with his family and receive proper medical care and treatment. The statement also condemned the authorities’ failure to respond to any of the family’s numerous requests for information and called for his immediate release.

ALQST and MENA Rights Group have been following the case of al-Qahtani with growing concern, and see al-Tuwaijri’s comments as typical of how the SHRC operates: not as an independent body safeguarding human rights and defending the victims of state abuses, but as a tool for covering up the Saudi authorities’ violations. 

They urged the Saudi authorities to immediately disclose Mohammed al-Qahtani’s whereabouts to release him, and to stop using the SHRC as cover for its rights violations.

The organizations also called on the United States to take more proactive measures to bring about the release of al-Qahtani, whose children are US citizens, and urge third-party governments to consider the SHRC a non-viable interlocutor in their negotiations regarding individual cases.