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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
Saudi Arabia has been cited by several international human
rights monitoring groups for its alleged failure to respect a
number of basic rights. London-based Amnesty International
reported receiving credible testimony from political prisoners
who alleged they were arbitrarily arrested, held in prolonged
detention without trial, and routinely tortured during
interrogations. Torture methods in the Mubahathat (office of
secret police) prisons included months in solitary confinement,
sleep deprivation, beatings to the soles of the feet, suspension
by the wrists from ceilings or high windows, and the application
of electric shocks to all parts of the body. Amnesty
International cited reports that sixty-six persons had been
detained without charge or trial for radical Shia activity,
although forty-one of these, as well as other political opponents
of the government, were released in 1990 on the occasion of a
royal pardon for more than 7,000 common criminals.
The human rights organization Middle East Watch, the
Minnesota Lawyers International Human Rights Committee, and the
International Committee for Human Rights in the Gulf and the
Arabian Peninsula issued reports in 1991 and 1992 that detailed
extensive use of torture in Saudi prisons as a means to extract
confessions from detainees. Prisoners reportedly signed
confessions to crimes they had not committed in order to escape
physical and psychological torture. As of October 1992, human
rights organizations had identified forty-three political
prisoners who had been detained for more than one year without
formal charges. Several prisoners are alleged to have died while
in police custody.
The Department of State reported in early 1991 that there was
no automatic procedure for informing a detainee's family or
employer of his arrest. Embassies usually heard of the arrest of
their nationals informally within a few days; official
notification took several months. A policy requiring Ministry of
Foreign Affairs approval of consular access to prisoners had
caused delays in consular visits.
In spite of calls after the Persian Gulf War for
modernization of laws and relief from the influence of strict
Islamism in the imposition of punishment, the royal family showed
little disposition to liberalize the criminal justice system. As
of early 1992, the conservative religious establishment seemed to
have solidified its ability to block reforms of the codes of law
and judicial procedures that were the sources of increasing
domestic and international criticism.
* * *
Among various works analyzing Saudi Arabia's defense posture,
The Gulf and the West: Strategic Relations and Military
Realities by Anthony H. Cordesman covers a range of topics
including the development of the armed forces, the modernization
of the air force, the various United States arms packages, and
the naval confrontation in the Persian Gulf. Additional details
on Saudi defense allocations and the arms buildup through the
early 1980s are presented in Nadav Safran's Saudi Arabia: The
Ceaseless Quest for Security. The Middle East, published by
the Congressional Quarterly in 1991, includes a concise
discussion of military sales from the United States political
perspective and a summary of events in the Persian Gulf crisis.
Limited treatment of the role played by Saudi Arabia in the
gulf war can be found in works on Operation Desert Storm by
Norman Friedman, Desert Victory, and James Blackwell,
Thunder in the Desert, and in an article by David A.
Fulghum in Aviation Week and Space Technology.
The aggression of Iraq against Kuwait and the decline of the
Soviet threat in the Middle East have reduced the relevance of
most earlier analyses of the strategic situation in the region.
Several studies are still pertinent to Saudi Arabia, however. In
Arms and Oil: U.S. Military Strategy and the Persian Gulf,
Thomas L. McNaugher considers how Saudi Arabia deals with both
external and domestic security threats as part of a broader
review of United States military interests in the region.
Saudi Arabia and the United States, a report prepared in
1981 by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of
Congress, is still a useful appraisal of Saudi external and
domestic security concerns and the strategic interests shared by
the two countries. In Saudi Arabia: The West and the Security
of the Gulf, Mazher A. Hameed examines the geopolitical
environment in the gulf and the range of threats to the United
States and the West.
A readable account of earlier Saudi military history can be
found in The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud by
Robert Lacey. Several aspects concerning the armed forces,
military production, and the administration of justice are
treated in Saudi Arabia Unveiled by Douglas F. Graham. The
operation of the judicial system and the Saudi record on human
rights are briefly examined in the annual Country Reports on
Human Rights Practices of the Department of State and annual
reports by Amnesty International.
Much of the data in the foregoing chapter concerning the
size, organization, and equipment of the Saudi armed forces is
based on The Military Balance, published annually by the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, and on Jane's
Fighting Ships. (For further information and complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1992
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