(Full text of petition, in arabic, on:
http://www.middleeasttransparent.com/article.php3?id_article=1972
Agence France-Presse – 31 August, 2007
Saudi activists will address a petition to King Abdullah urging the release of nine advocates of an Islam-based constitutional monarchy held for seven months without trial, one of them said yesterday.
The reformists, held for alleged links to terror funding, had been mulling the formation of an Islamic political party in a country ruled by an absolute monarchy where political parties are banned, according to the petition.
At least three of them have been on hunger strike for more than 10 days, one of the signatories of the petition, Khaled Al Omair, told AFP by telephone from Riyadh. The petition, posted on a Saudi Islamist website and already endorsed by more than 30 activists, “will be presented to the king at the beginning of Ramadan,” the Muslim fasting month expected to start on September 13, Omair said.
“We expect to collect around 400 signatures on the letter” to be either handed to Abdullah or sent by mail if he does not grant an audience to the signatories, Omair added.
In the 10-page petition, the activists accuse the interior ministry of seeking to discredit their fellow reformists by associating them with terrorism when they were arrested in early February.
The detainees had been “examining ideas pertaining to civil society mechanisms, such as an ‘Islamic national charter’ or an ‘Islamic constitution party’ and a ‘committee for freedoms and basic rights’ that would be proposed to a number of reformists,” the petition reads.
The real purpose of their detention is to “tarnish (the image of) proponents of a civil society,” chiefly advocates of a political system in line with the Islamic principle that allegiance to the ruler must be based on the application of “justice and shura (consultation),” it says.
The petition urges the king to free the nine activists or ensure that they get a public trial, noting that their seven-month detention already exceeds by one month the period in which suspects can be held without trial under Saudi law.
The nine reformists are lawyers Suleiman Al Rushoodi, Mussa Al Qarni and Issam Basrawi, academic Abdul Rahman Al Shemairi, Abdul Aziz Al Kheraiji, Saifeddin Faisal Al Sharif, Fahd Al Qarshi, Saud Al Hashemi and Abdul Rahman Khan.
Omair said that at least three of them — Basrawi, Qarni and Shemairi — are known to have started a hunger strike more than 10 days ago to protest their continued detention.
In an appeal to human rights groups, Shemairi’s wife said all the men were on hunger strike and exhorted rights watchdogs to intervene on their behalf.