Questions remain around Princess Basmah Bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud’s imprisonment and whether she has freedom of movement to receive the medical treatment she is seeking
News of Princess Basmah Bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud’s release from prison came to light earlier this month, but questions remain as to whether she has freedom of movement and if she can leave Saudi Arabia for the medical treatment she needs. Three years later, it is also not clear why she was arrested in the first place.
“She has been a peacemaker since the 1980s,” the princess’s legal adviser, Henri Estramant, told The Globe and Mail recently from his offices in Belgium. While the princess was detained, Mr. Estramant said that as her lawyer, he could not communicate with her directly. “I could merely exchange messages with her through her immediate family. Only they were able to speak to her during the first months of her incarceration.”
The first to share the news on social media of the princess’s release was ALQST – an independent NGO founded in 2014 by Saudi human-rights defender Yahya Assiri. Along with other NGOs, ALQST documented, lobbied and publicized the case. Mr. Estramant says there are indications that the regime’s leadership is seeking to improve the rule of law in Saudi Arabia. “The country is going in the right direction with the release of prominent activists like the princess herself but also people like Loujain al-Hathloul,” he said, referring to the human-rights activist who was detained in May, 2018 for campaigning for a woman’s right to drive weeks before the ban was lifted in the country.
He says that it is very welcome that another woman detainee held arbitrarily has now been released, but it does not mark a shift regarding the wider situation for women in Saudi Arabia.
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