Two South African sisters who were imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, initially without charge, has taken their complaint to the United Nations.
Yumna Desai, a former English teacher at the University of Ha’il in northern Saudi Arabia, said she had been held at Dhaban prison in Jeddah from 2015 to 2018.
A year and a half after her arrest, she was told she had been charged with unspecified “cyber crimes.”
Her sister Huda Mohammad, who had been married to a Saudi national and has a daughter with Saudi citizenship, was imprisoned for a year and never informed of any charge.
Their two brothers were also held and later released, they said.
All four had been working in Saudi Arabia and have now returned to live in South Africa.
“We were never given an explanation as to why we were arrested,” Desai said, giving testimony on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council.
“Today we have submitted an official complaint on Saudi treatment to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,” Desai said.
“Detainees are left for unknown periods in solitary confinement. They are threatened with arrests and detentions of family members if they did not confess,” Desai said.
“I stand here today to give a voice to the voiceless, those detainees who have been physically and psychologically tortured, sitting there for years without trial, denied visits, phone calls, medical aid,” she added.
The Saudi government did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.
Riyadh has in the past denied using any form of torture, or holding political prisoners.
