The Specialised Criminal Court of Saudi Arabia was established to prosecute terrorism cases. Its creation in 2008 was framed as a response to Al-Qaeda’s campaign of bombings and shootings within the Kingdom — a dedicated tribunal for defendants who had taken up arms against the state. By 2022, the court was sentencing tribal members to death for posting videos on social media opposing the demolition of their homes for a construction project. The transformation of the court’s function — from counter-terrorism to counter-dissent — is the judicial infrastructure that made the NEOM displacement legally possible and morally catastrophic.
What follows is the complete record of every named individual prosecuted, sentenced, or disappeared by the Saudi state for opposing the forced eviction of the Howeitat tribe from the NEOM zone. Every name. Every charge. Every sentence. The record is drawn from documentation by ALQST, MENA Rights Group, the European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. It is as complete as the available evidence allows. It is certainly not complete, because at least 19 Howeitat detainees remain held with no information released about their charges, sentences, or current condition.
The Court
The Specialised Criminal Court sits in Riyadh. It was designed to operate with the procedural protections appropriate to terrorism cases — which in Saudi Arabia’s legal system means fewer protections than ordinary criminal proceedings. Hearings can be held in secret. Defendants can be denied access to lawyers during interrogation. Confessions obtained under coercion are admissible. The court’s jurisdiction has expanded steadily since its creation, absorbing cases that in any other legal system would be classified as political dissent, peaceful protest, or — in the most extreme instances — grief.
All charges against the Howeitat were brought under the 2017 Saudi Law on Combating Crimes of Terrorism and Its Financing. The statute defines terrorism so broadly that virtually any act of opposition to state policy can be prosecuted under its provisions. The charges imposed on Howeitat defendants included “forming a terrorist cell,” “undermining national unity through online posts,” “seeking to disrupt national cohesion through a Twitter account,” and “expressing sympathy for a dead terrorist.” The “dead terrorist” referenced in the last charge was Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti — a government employee killed by special forces for refusing to leave his home — whose posthumous reclassification as a terrorist rendered every expression of mourning for him a criminal act.
UN experts have stated that the law “does not appear to be in line with international law” due to its vague provisions that allow peaceful opposition to be classified as terrorism. The UN Human Rights Council noted in May 2023 that the death penalty may only be imposed under international law for “the most serious crimes, involving intentional killing.” Social media posts about evictions do not meet that threshold under any recognised legal framework.
The Death Sentences
Five men have been sentenced to death for their opposition to the NEOM displacement. Three have had their sentences upheld on appeal. Two have been forcibly disappeared since their convictions.
Shadli Ahmed Mahmoud al-Huwaiti is the brother of Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, who was killed by security forces on 13 April 2020. Shadli was arrested in late 2020, subjected to approximately two months of enforced disappearance before resurfacing in detention, and charged under the counter-terrorism law. His charges included “forming a terrorist cell” and “undermining national unity through online posts” — charges that referred to his family’s refusal to vacate their home and his social media activity opposing the displacement.
In May 2022, Shadli conducted a hunger strike in prison. He was force-fed via stomach tube — a practice that the United Nations has classified as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment when administered to a competent person who has refused food as a form of protest. ALQST characterised the force-feeding as torture.
On 2 October 2022, the Specialised Criminal Court sentenced Shadli to death. On 23 January 2023, the Specialised Criminal Court of Appeal upheld the sentence. The case remains subject to Supreme Court review. If the Supreme Court affirms the sentence, Shadli faces execution — for social media posts about the eviction of his family and the killing of his brother.
Ibrahim Saleh Ahmed al-Huwaiti was one of the delegation of local residents who met the official commission charged with securing title to NEOM lands. His participation in the state’s own consultation process was subsequently reframed as evidence of conspiracy. He engaged with the government’s representatives as a community member seeking information about his family’s future. The engagement became his indictment. He was sentenced to death on 2 October 2022. His sentence was upheld on appeal on 23 January 2023.
Ataullah Musa Muhammad al-Huwaiti appeared in video clips discussing the conditions that displaced residents were facing — the inadequacy of compensation, the destruction of homes, the disruption of community life. His testimony — his willingness to describe publicly what was happening to his community — became the basis for a death sentence. He was sentenced on 2 October 2022. His sentence was upheld on 23 January 2023.
Suleiman al-Huwaiti was sentenced to death but has been forcibly disappeared since his conviction. His current location, condition, and legal status are unknown. No information has been released by Saudi authorities.
Moussa al-Huwaiti was also sentenced to death and forcibly disappeared following his conviction. Like Suleiman, his fate is unknown. The disappearance of convicted prisoners — individuals whose sentences are a matter of judicial record — represents a category of state action that defies legal classification. They are not free. They are not formally detained. They exist in a space outside the legal system that sentenced them, held by a state that acknowledges neither their location nor their treatment.
The 50-Year Sentences
The prison terms imposed on other Howeitat defendants were calibrated not for proportionality but for deterrence. The lengths were designed to exceed the productive lifetime of the accused — to ensure that resistance to NEOM carried a cost measured not in years of imprisonment but in the permanent removal of the individual from society.
Abdulilah Rashid Ibrahim al-Huwaiti was sentenced to 50 years in prison followed by a 50-year travel ban. The combined effect is a sentence of perpetual confinement and restriction — 100 years of state control over a single individual’s freedom for opposing the demolition of his home. He was among the first arrested in April 2020.
Abdullah Dakhil Allah al-Huwaiti received the same sentence: 50 years in prison followed by a 50-year travel ban. He was named by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2023 as one of six individuals facing imminent execution or extreme sentences linked to the NEOM project.
Mahmoud Ahmad Mahmoud al-Huwaiti received 35 years in prison. He is the uncle of Ahmed Abdel Nasser al-Huwaiti. His sentence was imposed for his family’s collective refusal to accept the eviction.
Abdelnasser Ahmad Mahmoud al-Huwaiti received 27 years in prison. He is the father of Ahmed Abdel Nasser al-Huwaiti. His sentence, like his brother’s, was imposed for his family’s resistance to the displacement.
The Student
Ahmed Abdel Nasser al-Huwaiti was 19 years old when he was arrested. He was a university student. His charges were: “seeking to disrupt national cohesion through his Twitter account” and “expressing sympathy for a dead terrorist.”
The “dead terrorist” was his uncle, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, who had been killed by Saudi security forces on 13 April 2020 for refusing to leave his home. Ahmed’s crime was mourning his uncle on social media. In the Saudi legal framework, expressing grief for a family member killed by the state is an act of terrorism if the state has classified the deceased as a terrorist — a classification that the state applied retroactively, after the killing, and that no independent tribunal has reviewed.
Ahmed received a 20-year prison sentence. He entered prison at 19. If he serves the full term, he will be released at 39, having spent more than half his life incarcerated for tweets about a dead relative. The sentence was imposed by a court established to prosecute bombers and armed militants. It was applied to a teenager who wrote on the internet.
The Woman
Maha Suleiman al-Qarani al-Huwaiti is a housewife and the only known woman among those detained in connection with the Howeitat displacement. She was arrested on 2 February 2021 at her home in Duba when state security and emergency forces raided her house. She was detained in front of her five children. The youngest was four months old.
Her arrest stemmed from two Twitter posts: one criticising the high cost of living and another expressing condolences for the death of Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti. These two tweets — one economic complaint, one expression of grief — constituted her entire corpus of criminal activity.
She was initially tried by the Specialised Criminal Court and sentenced to one year in prison. On appeal, she was retried on the same charges — a procedural violation under Saudi law, which prohibits double jeopardy. Her sentence was increased to three years. She was then retried again in August 2022 and resentenced to 23 years in prison.
Twenty-three years for two tweets. Maha al-Huwaiti holds the distinction of having received the longest non-capital sentence imposed on a female political prisoner in Saudi Arabia’s modern history. She is held at Dhahban Central Prison in Jeddah — hundreds of kilometres from her family and her community.
Her children are being raised without their mother. The four-month-old infant who was present when security forces entered the home is now five years old and has spent the vast majority of their life with their mother in prison.
The Disappeared
Halima al-Huwaiti was forcibly disappeared in November 2020, along with her son and husband, after refusing to vacate her home for NEOM. She has never been brought before a court. No charges have been filed. No information about her detention, location, or condition has been released by Saudi authorities.
Enforced disappearance — the detention of a person by the state followed by a refusal to acknowledge the detention or provide information about the person’s fate — is prohibited under international law as a matter of absolute prohibition, meaning it cannot be justified by any circumstances, including emergencies. It is classified as a crime against humanity when practiced systematically.
Halima’s disappearance has been documented by Together for Justice and the Sanad Organisation, both of which have called for information about her whereabouts. Saudi Arabia has not responded to these requests. As of April 2026, she has been missing for more than five years.
At least 19 additional Howeitat tribe members are detained with no information released about their charges, sentences, or current condition, according to ALQST’s February 2023 documentation. The complete scale of the disappearances is unknown because the Saudi government does not publish comprehensive detention records for political cases, and the families of the disappeared — themselves at risk of prosecution for speaking publicly — are unable to conduct independent inquiries.
The Conditions
The available evidence about detention conditions for Howeitat prisoners is fragmentary, derived primarily from human rights organisations’ contacts with families and, in some cases, from prisoners who have been released and were able to communicate through intermediaries.
ALQST and the European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights have documented allegations of solitary confinement, physical and psychological torture, and coerced confessions among Howeitat detainees. Shadli al-Huwaiti’s hunger strike and subsequent force-feeding in May 2022 is the most publicly documented instance of physical intervention.
The use of coerced confessions — statements extracted under physical or psychological duress and subsequently admitted as evidence — is a structural feature of the Specialised Criminal Court’s proceedings in political cases. The court does not require corroboration of confessions, and defendants’ claims of coercion are routinely dismissed without independent investigation. In the Howeitat cases, the combination of enforced disappearance, extended incommunicado detention, and subsequent confession presents a pattern consistent with the extraction of statements under conditions that no independent tribunal would accept as voluntary.
The Releases and Their Limits
Several Howeitat detainees have been released since 2024, in what human rights organisations have described as partial and conditional releases. The releases have been accompanied by travel bans that prevent the released individuals from leaving Saudi Arabia — effectively converting imprisonment to house arrest within the country’s borders. The travel bans are not time-limited. They are administrative instruments that can be extended indefinitely without judicial review.
For released prisoners, the travel ban means they cannot leave the country, cannot seek asylum, cannot testify before international bodies in person, and cannot escape the jurisdiction of the court that sentenced them. The release removes the physical confinement. It does not remove the legal control. The individuals remain within the Saudi legal system’s reach, subject to re-arrest, and unable to access the international protection mechanisms that might otherwise be available to political prisoners.
The pattern is not unique to the Howeitat cases. Saudi Arabia has used travel bans extensively against released political prisoners, women’s rights activists, and other categories of dissent. The mechanism allows the state to present releases as evidence of clemency while retaining the capacity to re-impose punishment at any time.
The Pattern
The Howeitat prosecutions are not an isolated incident of judicial overreach. They are the application of a pattern — developed over the preceding decade against journalists, bloggers, women’s rights activists, and religious scholars — to a new category of defendant: land rights defenders whose territory happens to overlap with a royal construction project.
The pattern has consistent elements: broad charges under the counter-terrorism statute; prosecution in the Specialised Criminal Court; sentences vastly disproportionate to the acts alleged; enforced disappearance during pre-trial detention; restrictions on access to legal representation; travel bans following release; and the absence of any independent review mechanism capable of challenging the proceedings.
What is unique about the Howeitat cases is the direct connection between the prosecutions and a commercial project. These are not dissidents prosecuted for challenging the monarchy’s legitimacy, or activists prosecuted for demanding women’s right to drive. These are families prosecuted for refusing to leave their homes so that a construction company — NEOM, a wholly-owned subsidiary of PIF — could use their land. The judicial system was deployed not to protect national security but to enforce a property transaction.
The Specialised Criminal Court’s docket now includes, alongside individuals accused of actual violent offences, a 19-year-old student who tweeted about his dead uncle, a housewife who posted condolences, and men who participated in the government’s own land acquisition consultation process. The court treats these defendants as equivalent threats to national security. The sentences it imposes reflect that classification.
The Arithmetic of Accountability
Five men face death for social media posts and community participation. At least two of them have been disappeared following their convictions. Two men are serving 50-year sentences with 50-year travel bans — 100 years of state control each. A 19-year-old received 20 years for mourning his uncle. A mother of five received 23 years for two tweets. At least 19 people are detained without information about their fate. One woman and her family have been disappeared since November 2020.
The total sentences imposed — death, decades of imprisonment, enforced disappearance — were generated by a court using a law designed for terrorists, applied to a community whose territory was required for a project that has since been substantially suspended. The Line, the structure that was supposed to run through Howeitat land, was suspended by PIF in September 2025. The construction that justified the evictions has stopped. The sentences have not been revisited. The death sentences have not been commuted. The prisoners have not been released. The disappeared have not been found.
The judicial campaign against the Howeitat is complete. The construction campaign that motivated it is not. The court did its work. The project did not do its. And the families of the sentenced — the children of Maha, the relatives of Shadli, the community of a tribe that predates the state that judged them — continue to live with sentences that were imposed for a city that does not exist, may never exist, and cost $50 billion to not build.
This investigation draws on documentation by ALQST (“The Dark Side of Neom,” February 2023; death sentence reports, October 2022 and January 2023; political prisoner profiles); MENA Rights Group (case profiles for Abdullah Dakhilallah al-Huwaiti and others); the European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (report on arbitrary detention and unjust sentences); the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (press release, May 2023, naming six individuals); UN News; Together for Justice and the Sanad Organisation (documentation of Halima al-Huwaiti’s disappearance); the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre; Middle East Eye; Dezeen; and Al Jazeera. Vision2030.AI is editorially independent and is not affiliated with NEOM, PIF, or any official Vision 2030 entity.