VI. Mosque Closures and Arrest of Religious Leaders

At the same time that the attention of many Saudi Shia was focused on effecting the release of their coreligionists arrested in Medina, Safwa, and 'Awwamiyya, Saudi authorities intensified their campaign to close Shia mosques and to arrest Shia religious leaders. Saudi authorities have closed three Shia prayer buildings that are not officially mosques. In both Khobar and Ahsa' the authorities have arrested scores of Shia religious leaders.

As noted in the previous chapter, in March 2009, after the Baqi' cemetery events, authorities effectively attempted to impose a ban on communal Shia prayers.

Khobar

On July 1, 2009, the authorities released one of the prayer leaders from Khobar, Abdullah Muhanna, from that city's general prison. They had arrested him on May 25 for refusing to sign a pledge to close the private prayer building adjacent to his house, to which Shia came to perform communal prayers. On July 15 police in Riyadh arrested another Khobar prayer leader, Zuhair Bu-Salih, in order to pressure his father, Husain, to sign a pledge to stop holding communal prayers in Khobar's al-Thuqba Shia prayer hall, which he runs.[85] There are no Shia mosques in Khobar, despite having a sizeable Shia population. A member of Muhanna's family told Human Rights Watch while his relative was still in detention, "My neighbor is building a mosque right now, with permission. He is Sunni. We Shia have no mosques, and now they want to prohibit us from praying in our house."[86] Also in Khobar, the authorities in mid-May 2009 threatened leaders of the Ismailis with closure of their only mosque there, which is 17 years old.[87]

Saudi authorities in June 2008 had closed three Shia private prayer buildings in Khobar, some in existence for 30 years, on orders of the Eastern Province governorate after briefly arresting their owners and some Shia who frequented them. Following appeals to Crown Prince Sultan, however, the governorate had allowed them to reopen in November 2008.

In addition to Abdullah Muhanna and Zuhair Husain Bu-Salih, Human Rights Watch has collected the names of eight Shia religious leaders in Khobar whom the authorities between 2008 and July 2009 threatened, summoned, or detained in connection with places of worship they were attending or hosting. They are Hashim bin al-Sayyid, Ali Nasir al-Salman, Al-Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Nasir, Shaikh Yusif Mazini-who led prayers at Husain Bu-Salih's Thuqba hall-Ahmad Ibrahim al-Nubat, Husain al-Rashid, Muhammad Abu Salih, and Musa al-Amir.

Ahsa'

In the southern part of the Eastern Province, Ahsa', the authorities have for years arrested Shia prayer leaders and pressured Shia to close private facilities providing community services, be they religious or cultural in nature.[88]

Between roughly 2001 and 2002 (1421 and 1423 hijri), local governors in the Eastern Province punished at least 60 Shia with extrajudicial sentences of one week to one month in prison for allowing religious recitation in their house or other worship-related activities. In 2004, 14 Shia received such treatment.[89] So far in 2009 the executive authorities have detained 20 Shia from Ahsa' for periods ranging between one week and one month: 15 of these were detained for holding private religious gatherings, and three for selling articles used in Shia religious ceremonies, such as clothing for `Ashura' or confectionery for Qarqi'un. The remaining two were detained for having signs with religious symbols; one of them is Shaikh Husain al-Hababi, who spent a week in prison in May for putting up a sign welcoming home Shaikh Jawad al-Hadhari, the Shia scholar who had been stabbed during the incidents at the Baqi' cemetery in Medina in February (see chapter IV).