Muslim Majorities Protection: Detention, Torture and Disappearance

Summary

Across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt and Syria, security forces detain, torture and disappear Muslim dissidents, while courts impose severe sentences and families are left searching for the missing.

What it argues

1. Syria's transition pledges justice

   Assad fell in December 2024 after 54 years of Baath rule; interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa took office in January 2025. In May 2025 al-Sharaa decreed a National Commission for the Missing and a National Commission for Transitional Justice, pledging to punish mass killings. Syria's new leadership has promised accountability but has yet to deliver answers to families.

2. Bahrain's Shia majority shut out

   Bahrain's Sunni monarchy has banned independent media and dissolved opposition groups since 2017, and intensified its crackdown since the 2011 uprising, per HRW. The government denies discriminating against its Shia citizens, per Al Jazeera. ADHRB found former detainees, including sexual-assault survivors, suffer lasting psychological harm, with almost no torture prosecutions. Political exclusion and unpunished torture have deepened for Bahrain's Shia Muslim majority.

3. Saudi projects evict and exploit

   Authorities evicted the Huwaitat tribe for NEOM; one protester was killed, two got 50-year terms and three were sentenced to death, HRW says. The PIF-owned Jeddah Central Development Company evicted lower- and middle-income Saudis and migrants for a luxury district. The kafala system ties migrant workers' status to employers, blocking unions, ahead of the 2034 World Cup. Saudi economic development has displaced and exploited Muslim residents and migrant workers.

4. Saudi courts impose severe sentences

   Under the counterterrorism law, Salma al-Shehab and Nourah al-Qahtani were sentenced to 34 and 45 years for peaceful social media activity, HRW reports. Yousif al-Manasif and Ali al-Mabyook, Shia Muslims from the eastern province, face execution for offenses allegedly committed as children, despite official denials such sentences occur. Saudi courts use counterterrorism law to impose decades-long terms and death sentences for expression and protest.

5. Egypt's courts crush opposition

   Politician Ahmed Tantawy and nearly two dozen supporters were imprisoned and barred from elections over his 2023 presidential challenge, per HRW. Alaa Abdelfattah remains detained beyond his sentence's end; new military-court powers over civilians expanded in 2024. Egyptian courts and expanded military jurisdiction continue to criminalize peaceful political dissent.

6. UAE's unfair mass trials

   Ali Abdullah Fath Ali al-Khaja died in al-Razeen Prison in November 2025 after 13 years of detention following the 2013 "UAE94" mass trial of 69 dissidents, HRW and EDAC say. New charges were brought against him and 83 others in December 2023 during COP28, with restricted legal access and secrecy. The UAE has used successive unfair mass trials to keep political dissidents imprisoned indefinitely.

7. Syria's disappeared haunt families

   The Syrian Network for Human Rights counted at least 177,057 forcibly disappeared between 2011 and August 2025, most blamed on the former government. Families have searched prisons, morgues and mass graves such as Saydnaya since Assad's fall; the ICRC calls their right to know "a fundamental humanitarian principle." Hundreds of thousands of Syrian families still await the truth about missing relatives.

8. Saudi guardianship law restricts women

   Saudi Arabia's Personal Status Law requires women to obtain a male guardian's permission to marry or travel, and ties their maintenance to obeying their husbands. Men can unilaterally divorce; women must prove "harm" in court, and authorities did not consult women's rights activists on the law. Saudi family law continues to codify male control over women's lives.