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The number of Saudi Arabians “fleeing their country and seeking asylum abroad” has spiked since 2013, according to a first-ever survey of its kind published on Thursday by the UK-based human rights organisation Alqst.

Alqst reported that the 10-year period up to 2023, during which UN data shows a significant increase in Saudi refugees and asylum seekers, has seen a marked rise in authoritarianism in the kingdom, particularly since King Salman ascended the throne and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rose to power. 

In 2013, UN data cited in the report recorded 575 Saudi Arabian refugees in 14 countries and 192 asylum seekers.

By the first half of 2023, that figure had surged to 2,100 refugees in 25 countries and 1,748 asylum seekers, representing an increase of over 400 percent of Saudi Arabians seeking protection.

While this diaspora community has been growing, Alqst said little is known about the challenges they face in host countries. There is also a lack of quantitative data on why they left and chose to stay away, which prompted the survey.

“It was really important for us to do the report as Saudis were seeing more and more people leaving the country,” Lina Hathloul, Alqst’s head of monitoring and advocacy told Middle East Eye.

“The new phenonomena had to be analysed and understood for different reasons: understanding the current state of things in Saudi Arabia, but also building a network of people living similar things.”

The survey, conducted earlier this year, received responses from 100 Saudi Arabian citizens and former residents, with 67 completing it in part or in full. 

Alqst acknowledged the small sample size but noted it was impressive considering the perceived risks of participating.

Some individuals declined to participate due to concerns over digital security or fears that relatives in the kingdom would be arrested or banned from travelling abroad.

Why they left

Over the past ten years, there has been a rise in refugees and asylum seekers globally which migration experts who spoke with MEE attributed in large part to war and climate change. 

But Alqst said factors driving people to flee other countries didn’t make sense in the Saudi context. “Saudi Arabia is not a war zone, nor is it a land of natural disasters or humanitarian crises,” the report said.

“So who are these Saudis in exile, and why are they leaving behind their wealthy country, whose leaders claim to be creating new economic opportunities and building a liberal, bright, modern future for their citizens?”

‘I knew if I called the police, they would contact my guardian and just send me back’

– Respondent to Alqst’s survey

Respondents told Alqst they left for various reasons, but most cited a lack of political or religious freedom and feelings of vulnerability due to their activism or that of a family member. Others left because of their sexual orientation. 

A quarter of the respondents said they fled as a result of domestic violence, with several sharing stories of failed attempts to get help from authorities and noting the power of the kingdom’s male guardianship system over their lives.

One respondent said their father constantly threatened them, but they could not seek protection because the law “doesn’t recognise that I even have rights, and because of my father’s government connections”.

An American-born citizen said their Saudi Arabian stepfather had reported them as a runaway, presumably when they fled. “I knew if I called the police, they would contact my guardian and just send me back,” the respondent said.

This respondent believed their stepfather remained “a legitimate risk” to their safety, along with two brothers who would “undoubtedly seek retribution” for their women’s rights activism.

Nearly a quarter of respondents said they had sought help from official bodies in the kingdom without satisfaction. Half of those who sought help said they had received responses from authorities, but none felt the responses had been helpful. 

One person said they called a human rights-focused organisation several times. “But unfortunately, they informed my attackers, which made matters worse.”

Others said they felt they had no means of getting help from official bodies. 

“I’m queer, so I can’t turn to the authorities. We don’t have that privilege,” one person said.

Once they reached their host countries, 47 percent reported suffering from mental health issues, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Finding affordable housing and jobs, as well as a lack of communication with their families, were also top issues facing Saudi Arabians in the diaspora.

Over 93 percent of those surveyed said they believed they would not be safe if they returned to Saudi Arabia, even if authorities gave them assurances of their safety.

Hathloul said most of the findings were not a surprise for her given Alqst’s casework and research, but she was suprised by the numbers of people fleeing domestic abuse.

“It is one thing to live under a dictatorship and have to flee for fundamental rights, but is a country like Saudi, which is not lacking resources or coercive apparatuses, not able to protect people from their own families’ abuse?” she said.

“The hierarchical layers of oppression seems like a state strategy to maintain power.”

The number of Saudi Arabians “fleeing their country and seeking asylum abroad” has spiked since 2013, according to a first-ever survey of its kind published on Thursday by the UK-based human rights organisation Alqst.

Alqst reported that the 10-year period up to 2023, during which UN data shows a significant increase in Saudi refugees and asylum seekers, has seen a marked rise in authoritarianism in the kingdom, particularly since King Salman ascended the throne and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rose to power. 

In 2013, UN data cited in the report recorded 575 Saudi Arabian refugees in 14 countries and 192 asylum seekers.

By the first half of 2023, that figure had surged to 2,100 refugees in 25 countries and 1,748 asylum seekers, representing an increase of over 400 percent of Saudi Arabians seeking protection.

While this diaspora community has been growing, Alqst said little is known about the challenges they face in host countries. There is also a lack of quantitative data on why they left and chose to stay away, which prompted the survey.

“It was really important for us to do the report as Saudis were seeing more and more people leaving the country,” Lina Hathloul, Alqst’s head of monitoring and advocacy told Middle East Eye.

“The new phenonomena had to be analysed and understood for different reasons: understanding the current state of things in Saudi Arabia, but also building a network of people living similar things.”

The survey, conducted earlier this year, received responses from 100 Saudi Arabian citizens and former residents, with 67 completing it in part or in full. 

Alqst acknowledged the small sample size but noted it was impressive considering the perceived risks of participating.

Some individuals declined to participate due to concerns over digital security or fears that relatives in the kingdom would be arrested or banned from travelling abroad.

Why they left

Over the past ten years, there has been a rise in refugees and asylum seekers globally which migration experts who spoke with MEE attributed in large part to war and climate change. 

But Alqst said factors driving people to flee other countries didn’t make sense in the Saudi context. “Saudi Arabia is not a war zone, nor is it a land of natural disasters or humanitarian crises,” the report said.

“So who are these Saudis in exile, and why are they leaving behind their wealthy country, whose leaders claim to be creating new economic opportunities and building a liberal, bright, modern future for their citizens?”

‘I knew if I called the police, they would contact my guardian and just send me back’

– Respondent to Alqst’s survey

Respondents told Alqst they left for various reasons, but most cited a lack of political or religious freedom and feelings of vulnerability due to their activism or that of a family member. Others left because of their sexual orientation. 

A quarter of the respondents said they fled as a result of domestic violence, with several sharing stories of failed attempts to get help from authorities and noting the power of the kingdom’s male guardianship system over their lives.

One respondent said their father constantly threatened them, but they could not seek protection because the law “doesn’t recognise that I even have rights, and because of my father’s government connections”.

An American-born citizen said their Saudi Arabian stepfather had reported them as a runaway, presumably when they fled. “I knew if I called the police, they would contact my guardian and just send me back,” the respondent said.

This respondent believed their stepfather remained “a legitimate risk” to their safety, along with two brothers who would “undoubtedly seek retribution” for their women’s rights activism.

Nearly a quarter of respondents said they had sought help from official bodies in the kingdom without satisfaction. Half of those who sought help said they had received responses from authorities, but none felt the responses had been helpful. 

One person said they called a human rights-focused organisation several times. “But unfortunately, they informed my attackers, which made matters worse.”

Others said they felt they had no means of getting help from official bodies. 

“I’m queer, so I can’t turn to the authorities. We don’t have that privilege,” one person said.

Once they reached their host countries, 47 percent reported suffering from mental health issues, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Finding affordable housing and jobs, as well as a lack of communication with their families, were also top issues facing Saudi Arabians in the diaspora.

Over 93 percent of those surveyed said they believed they would not be safe if they returned to Saudi Arabia, even if authorities gave them assurances of their safety.

Hathloul said most of the findings were not a surprise for her given Alqst’s casework and research, but she was suprised by the numbers of people fleeing domestic abuse.

“It is one thing to live under a dictatorship and have to flee for fundamental rights, but is a country like Saudi, which is not lacking resources or coercive apparatuses, not able to protect people from their own families’ abuse?” she said.

“The hierarchical layers of oppression seems like a state strategy to maintain power.”

Three Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks in the US, and who were previously tortured at CIA black sites, have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and murder charges, the US Department of Defense said on Wednesday.

The three men, who include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks in which 2,976 people were killed, agreed to the plea deal in return for assurances from prosecutors that they would not face the death penalty, according to a letter sent by US military prosecutors to families of 9/11 victims.

The plea deal appears to offer the prospect of a resolution to legal proceedings that have been mired for years in pre-trial arguments over whether evidence obtained from the defendants through torture was admissible in court.

In the letter, seen by Middle East Eye, prosecutors said the three men, who have been detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2006, could enter guilty pleas as soon as next week.

“The decision to enter into a pre-trial agreement… was not reached lightly; however, it is our collective, reasoned, and good-faith judgment that this resolution is the best path to finality and justice in this case,” they wrote.

Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who has represented detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, told MEE that the deal would bring the US “one step closer to closure on both a very tragic moment in US history and a terrible and barbaric response to it.

“A major motivator in the plea agreement is that it is seen as a quid pro quo for the fact that people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were tortured in unspeakable ways,” said Stafford Smith.

Waterboarded 183 times

Mohammed, a 59-year-old Pakistani national, was captured in Rawalpindi in 2003 and then held in CIA secret detention facilities in Afghanistan and Poland, where he was waterboarded 183 times and subjected to other forms of torture and abuse, before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

His co-defendants who have also agreed plea deals are Walid Bin Attash, a 46-year-old Yemeni citizen, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, a 55-year-old Saudi national.

Attash is alleged to have trained some of the hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks, in which airliners were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, and another plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Hawsawi is alleged to have been a financial facilitator of the plot. Both Attash and Hawsawi were captured in Pakistan in 2003 and then held at CIA black sites and Guantanamo Bay.

Earlier this year a court in Lithuania ordered the country’s government to pay compensation to Hawsawi, ruling that officials should have known he would be subjected to ill treatment at a CIA detention facility in the Baltic state.

A 2014 report by the Senate’s intelligence committee on the CIA’s torture programme found that Hawsawi had been among detainees subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques, despite doubts and questions surrounding their knowledge of terrorist threats and the location of senior al-Qaeda leadership”.

The report said Hawsawi had been subjected to rectal examinations conducted with such “excessive force” that he was left with severe injuries and ongoing health issues.

Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee and the outreach director for Cage International, told MEE: “It’s taken more than two decades for some semblance of justice to come for the victims of 9/11, but also the victims of the United States of America, which is those who were held in Guantanamo.

“Guantanamo was set up in order primarily to hold to account those responsible for 9/11 but also to protect America, and they have failed in both regards.”

Families still seeking answers

As part of the plea deal, prosecutors said the three men had also agreed to answer questions submitted by the families of 9/11 victims “regarding their roles and reasons for conducting the September 11 attacks”.

But the plea deal was criticised by a number of groups representing survivors and families of victims of the attack, who have accused Saudi Arabia of involvement in 9/11.

“We urge the administration to ensure that these deals do not close the door on obtaining critical information that can shed light on Saudi Arabia’s role in the 9/11 attacks. Our quest for justice will not waver until the full truth is revealed, and justice is served for the victims and their families,” said Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, in a statement reported by CNN.

‘Here we are, 23 years later, and there has not been one meaningful trial of anyone involved in 9/11, and there won’t be’

– Clive Stafford Smith, lawyer

Earlier on Wednesday, lawyers for Saudi Arabia asked a court in Manhattan to dismiss a case in which families of the victims accuse Saudi officials in the US of providing support to some of the 9/11 hijackers. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. The kingdom has denied any involvement in the attacks.

Two more Guantanamo detainees have also faced charges over the attacks. Last year a military judge ruled that Ramzi bin al Shibh, a 52-year-old Yemeni national held at Guantanamo Bay, was mentally unfit to stand trial after his lawyers had argued he had been driven “insane” by CIA torture and interrogation methods.

Lawyers for the fifth man accused, Ammar al-Baluchi, a 46-year-old Kuwaiti national, have argued that his torture by the CIA left him with brain damage, after he was used as a “teaching prop” for trainee interrogators.

The extrajudicial detention of hundreds of men – seized during the invasion of Afghanistan and the so-called “war on terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks – at the US Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba has long been condemned by human rights organisations, with 30 detainees still held there.

It remains unclear where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Attash and Hawsawi will serve what are expected to be life sentences. 

Stafford Smith said the offer by prosecutors of plea deals reflected the continuing failings and “hubristic futility” of the Guantanamo system.

“The idea that a bunch of prosecutors could make up a system that radically curtailed due process was a foolish and immoral one,” he said, “with the consequence that here we are, 23 years later, and there has not been one meaningful trial of anyone involved in 9/11, and there won’t be.”