Today, human rights lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair will be awarded with the Ludovic Trarieux Prize. As Abu al-Khair is currently serving a prison sentence of 15 years, his lawyer Daniel Arshack will accept the prize on his behalf.
Waleed Abu al-Khair is a prominent human rights lawyer and the head of the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. He also was the lawyer of blogger Raif Badawi, who is imprisoned as well.
On February 15, 2015, the Specialized Criminal Court of Appeal in Riyadh confirmed a sentence of fifteen years in prison, a travel ban of equal duration following imprisonment and a fine of SR 200.000,- (approximately EUR 47.000,-). The charges against him were “striving to overthrow the state and the authority of the King”, “criticising and insulting the judiciary”, “assembling international organisations against the Kingdom”, “creating and supervising an unlicensed organisation”, “contributing to the establishment of another” and “preparing and storing information that will affect public security”.
The Ludovic Trarieux Prize is an initiative of the Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA) and the European Bar Human Rights Institute (IDHAE) and several European national and local bar associations.
Shortly before he went to jail, Waleed Abu al-Khair was interviewed by Amnesty International (AI). AI published the following video of this interview:
