Detained Saudis Described as Democracy Activists

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 6 -- Saudi police have arrested 10 men and accused them of collecting donations to fund terrorist acts outside the kingdom, the Interior Ministry said. But a lawyer and a prominent dissident said that at least seven of the men were Saudi democracy activists whose arrest was a government attempt to abort their civic rights work.

Matrouk al-Faleh, who was jailed in 2004 for calling for more democracy in the kingdom, said the seven men, most of them lawyers and professors, had been waiting for government approval to set up a civic rights group. They also had planned to present authorities this week with a list of more than 40 prisoners without legal representation whom they intended to defend.

"The terrorist allegation is a coverup," Faleh said. "It was used against me as well when I was arrested. . . . This is an attempt to abort the civic rights work they were planning."

Police went to the Jiddah beach house of lawyer Essam Basrawi on Friday night and arrested him and five other Saudi men. Saudi businessman Abdul-Aziz al-Khereiji was arrested at a checkpoint as he drove to Jiddah with his wife, said Bassim Alim, an attorney who represents four of the detainees.

Basrawi's Moroccan personal assistant also was detained. There was no information on the identities of the two other men.

An Interior Ministry spokesman told local newspapers that the arrested men had been involved in financing recruiters who sign up young Saudis to go into "turbulent areas," which is generally a reference to Iraq. The spokesman said sizable amounts of cash had been found during searches of the men's homes.

Many young Saudi radicals have crossed the long and porous border between the kingdom and Iraq and joined up with Sunni Muslim insurgents there.

Alim said that the government's accusations were baseless and that his clients were well-known reformists with no connection to terrorism. He said they might have been raising funds for Palestinian or Iraqi refugees. The men had been warned repeatedly by the government not to gather or write petitions because authorities feared the rise of a new political reform movement, he said.

"They don't want any kind of organized reform movement; they're trying to stomp on any organized calls for reform," Alim said.

Alim said police had illegally searched the men's homes without warrants after midnight on Friday and seized files, books and computers. Neither Alim nor family members have been allowed to see the arrested men.

"If they are guilty of any crime, why aren't they allowed lawyers and charged publicly and shown proof or evidence?" Faleh said.

The arrests were the first to target democracy activists since reform-minded King Abdullah took the throne in 2005 and pardoned Faleh and two other leading activists who had spent 18 months in prison.

A dozen other men arrested with them in March 2004 signed statements pledging to stop lobbying for political freedoms. But Faleh and the two others refused to sign and demanded legal representation and a public trial. Legal defense and public trials are allowed under Saudi law but rarely applied. Most defendants go to court without attorneys.

Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, has a consultative council appointed by the government, and carried out limited municipal elections in 2005. Despite Abdullah's cautious steps toward reform, the kingdom continues to show little tolerance for political opposition. It imposes strict limits on freedom of expression and bans public gatherings and political parties.

One of men arrested Friday, Sulaiman al-Rushoodi, is a lawyer and former judge who had been among the group of activists detained in 2004. He was released several weeks later after pledging to address his demands solely to authorities, and he joined the defense team of the three activists then still behind bars.

Basrawi is a prominent activist who helped draft petitions addressed to the government during a vibrant period of political activism before the 2004 arrests.

The consultative Shura Council recently announced it was considering laws permitting the setting up of civic rights groups, which are currently not allowed in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia has two government-appointed human rights committees but bans independent human rights and civil rights organizations.