Critics of Saudi regime are at risk – wherever they may be

The scale of Saudi Arabia’s ambition for total control – both inside and beyond its own borders – was spelled out for the rest of the world at the end of 2017 when the democratically elected leader of another country went missing on an official visit to Riyadh.

The Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, had apparently frustrated Saudi authorities with his policy of accommodation towards Iran-backed Hezbollah, but they had neither the time nor patience for the usual diplomatic tactics such as economic blandishments or political threats.

Instead he was put under house arrest and forced to issue a resignation letter. French intervention helped broker a return to Lebanon and, once there, a return to office. But the message was clear: Saudi Arabia did not consider its jurisdiction, or its reach, ended at its borders.

That lesson was hammered home last week after Jamal Khashoggi, one of the government’s most high-profile critics, vanished after going to a meeting in the Istanbul consulate. Turkish authorities have since claimed he was murdered inside the building. Saudi authorities deny Khashoggi has been kidnapped or murdered but have provided no evidence that he left the consulate or is still alive.

Other long-term critics of Riyadh say his disappearance fits a grim pattern of international harassment. “Saudi dissidents living abroad have long feared the overreach of the authorities,” Manal al-Sharif, an Australia-based women’s rights campaigner, wrote in a column that was both a tribute to Khashoggi and a message of defiance.

Loujain al-Hathloul, an activist who was one of the most prominent faces of the campaign to win women the right to drive, was lifted from the streets of the United Arab Emirates in March. Returned to Saudi Arabia, she was formally detained in May and has languished in prison since.

Her husband, an actor, was arrested in Jordan around the same time and pressured to divorce her, other activists say. Nawaf al-Rashid, a poet who had no political profile, was seized in Kuwait and sent to Saudi Arabia, rights groups said. No clear legal case was presented for any of the transfers.

Saudis beyond the immediate reach of Saudi authorities or agents say they face retaliation for speaking out. A Canada-based dissident, Omar Abdulaziz, said this year that his brothers had been arrested because of his campaigning on social media.

Even foreign critics are under pressure. When the Canadian foreign ministry urged Riyadh to release arrested dissidents, Saudi authorities responded by expelling the Canadian ambassador and suspending new trade and investment with Ottawa.

The heightened response to criticism, internally and abroad, is widely considered the work of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The youngest man to run his oil-rich desert kingdom in decades, he carefully crafted an image as a modernising reformer as he rose to power. He has loosened rigid social controls, curbed the reach of the conservative clergy and promised to diversify the oil-dependent economy.

But he has also made clear that his appetite for change does not extend to politics. There are no plans to dilute the power of one of the world’s few remaining absolute monarchies.

When he lifted the ban on female drivers but arrested the women who had campaigned for that change, Bin Salman made clear he will only tolerate change directed by and credited to the government.

Khashoggi was probably particularly alarming as a critic because of his background and connections. He had spent years at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s media world and political establishment and could not be dismissed as a disgruntled or embittered outsider.

A prominent international journalist with a column in the Washington Post, his disappearance stunned the world. The British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said he was seeking “urgent answers”.

If he has been murdered, it would be a grim escalation in efforts to control opponents, Sharif said. “There are reports of abductions but no assassination yet, to the best of my knowledge. It’s all part of a state-run plan to silence criticism of the Saudi leadership.”