The Wide Gap Between De Jure and De Facto Law of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Saudi Arabia is a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, commonly known as the United Nations Convention against Torture (UNCAT). The Kingdom’s own criminal code contains safeguards against ill-treatment and torture of detainees. And yet, according to troubling accounts widely reported last week, advisors to the Saudi royal family, human rights activists, and others with knowledge of the torture of detainees, said that Saudi security officers tortured eight of 18 jailed women’s-right activists this year (“Saudi Women’s Rights Activist Face Torture,” Wall Street Journal , November 21, 2018; “Jailed Saudi Women’s Rights Activists Said to Suffer Abuse,” Washington Post, November 21, 2018). Together with the October 2, 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, these accounts of alleged incidents of psychological and physical torture, including sleep deprivation, electric shocks, and...