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Foreign workers face abuse, torture in Saudi Arabia: report
July 15, 2004
New York - Foreign workers face abuse, torture and forced confessions in Saudi
Arabia, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
Its 135-page report is called, Bad Dreams: Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant
Workers in Saudi Arabia.
"The abuses we found against foreign workers demonstrate appalling flaws in the
kingdom's criminal justice system," said Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights
Watch.
Whitson pointed to the sexual abuse of female domestic workers, some of whom
were serving sentences for "illegal pregnancies."
The New York-based group visited the kingdom in January 2003 after an
invitation from Saudi officials. It then interviewed workers who had returned
to their homes in India, Bangladesh and the Philippines.
The report said many workers who had been detained were forced to make
confessions under duress and signed Arabic-language statements they could not
understand. Some were executed without prior notice to their embassies or their
families.
The report supports the story of Canadian William Sampson, who spent 31 months
in a Saudi jail. Sampson was convicted of carrying out car bombings that killed
a British man and injured several others. Sampson and five accused British
citizens were released from prison last year.
Sampson said he was kept in solitary confinement most of the time, tortured
repeatedly and forced to sign a guilty plea. He and six other men held in the
prison are looking to sue the Saudi interior minister, the deputy governor of
the jail where they were held and two guards they say tortured them.
Nayef bin Hashem al-De'is, a member of the country's Human Rights Committee in
the Consultative Council, said his committee is reviewing new human rights
laws.
Saudi Arabia has about six million foreign workers, most of whom work in the
oil and service industries.
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Slavery
of women and children in Persian gulf countries
6-20-2004
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