Saudi Arabia: What Day of Rage?
There was, in fact, a Day of Rage in Saudi Arabia.
There’s just one problem:
The only man to protest on Saudi Arabia’s day of rage has suffered in prison, his family say.
Khaled al-Johani was arrested minutes after going to the courthouse in Riyadh and giving a BBC interview in which he called for democracy and described the country as a big jail.
His family have now told the BBC that they were not allowed to see him for the first 58 days of his incarceration. And when they did see him, says his brother, Abdullah al-Johani, their concerns increased.
“He has lost a lot of weight. The situation is sad and he is depressed. He doesn’t have any of his own clothes and we can’t give him food or money.”
More after the link.
With the two holiest cities in Islamic tradition within their territory (and billions of dollars in funding from America), clearly the toughest religious theocracy in the world is still a very tough nut to crack. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t cracks, they’re just often too small to see without media attention once in a while.