Supporters of detained Saudi princess call for UK to help secure release
Exclusive: letters to Dominic Raab and Lady
Scotland say Princess Basmah requires urgent medical treatment
Supporters of a prominent
Saudi Arabian princess detained with her daughter in Riyadh have appealed to
the British government to help secure their release.
In
two letters to both foreign secretary Dominic Raab and Commonwealth general
secretary Patricia Scotland, the princess’s supporters urged them to intervene
on behalf of Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud and her daughter
Souhoud Al Sharif, arrested in Jeddah two years ago.
They said that the princess suffers from a heart condition that
requires urgent medical treatment. “We believe her life depends on her
release,” said the family’s legal adviser Henri Estramant and Lucy Rae of the
British human rights organisation Grant Liberty in the letter.
“We are begging you to
intercede. As they are citizens of the Commonwealth we believe you have a moral
obligation to fight their corner,” they wrote. The pair became dual nationals
of Saudi Arabia and the island of Dominica, a Commonwealth nation in 2015,
after the princess applied for their citizenship-by-investment programme.
Princess Basmah,
the daughter of Saudi Arabia’s second king and an outspoken human rights
advocate, was detained in March
2019 along with her daughter. The pair were arrested as the
princess attempted to leave Saudi Arabia for Switzerland, where she was due to
have medical treatment for a heart condition. Her private plane never left
Jeddah, while CCTV footage obtained by Spanish outlet ABC shows eight armed men waiting
in the lobby of the princess’s penthouse to detain her before covering the
security cameras.
The princess and
her daughter were taken to Ha’ir prison, an infamous maximum security facility
in Riyadh that houses an estimated 5,000 prisoners, including feminist activist
Loujain Al Hathloul before her release in
February. Al Hathloul, who was tortured in detention, remains banned from
travel outside Saudi Arabia.
“You will be aware that Al
Ha’ir is a well-known hub for the torture, and abuse of prisoners of conscience
in Saudi Arabia,” Estrament and Rae wrote to Raab, citing Princess Basmah’s
ties to the UK, including her education at a school in Hertfordshire and a
London-based research centre, Global United Research and Analysis.
Both
letters said the princess was likely to have been detained because of her past
support for increased civil liberties within the kingdom, as well as her “close
links … to erstwhile crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef”.
Princess
Basmah’s supporters asked both Raab and Lady Scotland to raise Princess
Basmah’s case with authorities in Saudi Arabia and “use every diplomatic and
legal tool at your disposal to force change”.
“We
believe that the Saudi authorities are particularly sensitive to diplomatic
pressure at present, and we further believe that an intervention by you could
make the difference,” they added.