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Saudi Arabia arrests prominent religious Safar al-Hawali
13.07.2018
Saudi Arabia arrested influential religious scholar Safar al-Hawali and three of his sons, activists said Thursday, broadening an apparent crackdown against clerics, intellectuals and rights activists.
Saudi Arabian rights group ALQST said the arrests took place after Hawali published a book criticizing the Saudi royal family. Yahya Assiri of ALQST told reporters that the arrests took place on Wednesday
Another guard duty dog reported the arrest of Hawali, citing sources close to him.
Authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Riyadh says he has no political prisoners, but senior officials have said that the control of activists is necessary to maintain social stability.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has received praise for the economic and social reforms hailed as evidence of a new progressive trend. Last year, the king's powerful son is not doing enough to liberalize politics in a country where the monarch enjoys absolute authority and Hawali took on importance 25 years ago in as leader of the Sahwa movement, which acted to bring democracy to Saudi Arabia and criticized the ruling family for corruption, social liberalization and work with the West.
He was imprisoned in a crackdown on Islamists in the 1990s, but was released after stifling his critics. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hawali supported an anti-US. "Jihad" but also denounced the attacks of Islamist militants against Westerners in Saudi Arabia.
The Sahwa have been weakened by a mixture of repression and co-optation, but remain active.
The al-Saud family has always considered Islamist groups as the greatest internal threat to its authority over a country in which appeals to religious sentiment can not be lightly dismissed and a campaign of al-Saud Qaeda a decade ago killed hundreds. (Reuters)
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