On 12 April 2020, Abdul Rahim bin Ahmed Mahmoud al-Huwaiti, a 43-year-old employee of the Saudi Ministry of Finance, uploaded a video to social media from his home in the village of Al-Khuraiba in Tabuk province. He spoke directly to the camera. He said he did not want to leave. He said he did not want compensation. He said he would not be surprised if they came and killed him in his home. He predicted they would plant weapons afterward to incriminate him.
The next morning, at approximately 5:40 AM on 13 April, Saudi special forces assaulted the house with heavy weapons. Abdul Rahim was killed. Saudi authorities issued a statement days later claiming he had barricaded himself and that it had been necessary to “deal with him to neutralise his danger.” A pro-government newspaper published a statement from an alleged tribal leader declaring that al-Huwaiti had acted alone and that the tribe supported NEOM.
Abdul Rahim’s village sat within the 26,500-square-kilometre footprint of NEOM, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship megaproject. He had refused to leave the land his family had occupied for generations. The eviction order came without prior consultation. The compensation on offer was approximately $3,000 per family. And the project that required his removal has since spent over $50 billion, produced 2.4 kilometres of foundation work for a 170-kilometre linear city, and, as of April 2026, has not welcomed a single resident.
His death was the first killing. It was not the last act of violence. What followed — the arrests, the death sentences, the disappearances, the 21,000 worker deaths, the 100,000 labourers reported missing — constitutes the most extensively documented corporate human rights catastrophe of the 21st century. No one has been held accountable.
The Howeitat
The al-Huwaitat are an indigenous tribal group of approximately 20,000 people who have inhabited the mountains and coastline of northwestern Saudi Arabia for centuries. Their presence in the region predates the Saudi state. T. E. Lawrence documented their territory during the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918. Their ancestral lands include the villages of Al-Khuraiba, Sharma, and Gayal — settlements that fall squarely within the boundaries drawn around NEOM when the project was announced on 24 October 2017.
In April 2017, six months before the public announcement, the Public Investment Fund quietly acquired title to Red Sea lands encompassing the tribal territory. Property transactions and licence renewals in the area were suspended. Justice Ministry committees issued emergency land acquisition orders in February 2018. No formal consultation with the Howeitat preceded any of these actions.
On 1 January 2020, the Tabuk Emirate announced compulsory eviction of residents from Al-Khuraiba, Sharma, and Gayal. Social Development committees arrived weeks later to process relocations and assess compensation. The stated relocation amount was 620,000 riyals — approximately $165,000. The amounts actually disbursed to families were as low as 17,000 riyals, or roughly $4,500. Some families received the initial offer of approximately $3,000.
Those who resisted were visited by convoys. In March 2020, Saudi authorities sent special forces — sometimes 40 vehicles at a time — to raid the homes of Howeitat members who had not accepted the eviction terms. The raids were designed to intimidate. They succeeded, except with those who had decided that their land was not for sale at any price.
The Killing and Its Aftermath
Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti’s death triggered a chain of events that would produce death sentences, 50-year prison terms, forced disappearances, hunger strikes, and a formal United Nations intervention — all for a construction project that has since been substantially suspended.
In the weeks following the killing, Saudi authorities offered up to 100,000 riyals — approximately $26,585 — to state-appointed tribal leaders on the condition that they publicly condemn Abdul Rahim’s resistance. Authorities also pledged 100,000 riyals per tribe member and 300,000 riyals per “Sheikh” in return for their participation in an official propaganda film designed to make the tribe disown Abdul Rahim and other members who were refusing the expulsion order. The film was produced. The resistance continued.
Mass arrests began in April 2020. Abdulilah Rashid Ibrahim al-Huwaiti was among the first detained. In the week of 21 September 2020, Suleiman Mohammed al-Taqique al-Huwaiti, a prominent tribal activist, was arrested and his social media accounts deactivated. Thirteen other tribe members were allegedly abducted by security forces around the same time and held incommunicado.
In November 2020, Halima al-Huwaiti — along with her son and husband — was forcibly disappeared after refusing to vacate her home. She has never been brought before a court. No charges have been filed. As of the most recent reporting, her fate and whereabouts remain unknown.
On 9 October 2020, the al-Huwaitat tribe submitted a formal request to the United Nations calling for an investigation into the forced displacement. The UN had already taken notice. On 10 August 2020, UN mandate holders had issued a formal communication expressing “grave concern” about Abdul Rahim’s killing, referenced as AL SAU 11/2020.
The Sentences
The Specialised Criminal Court — originally established to handle terrorism cases — became the venue for prosecuting tribal members whose crime was refusing to leave their homes. All charges were brought under the 2017 Saudi Law on Combating Crimes of Terrorism and Its Financing, a statute whose provisions are so broadly drafted that social media posts opposing an eviction can be classified as acts of terror.
On 2 October 2022, the court handed down death sentences on three men:
Shadli Ahmed Mahmoud al-Huwaiti, the brother of the killed Abdul Rahim. He had been arrested in late 2020 and forcibly disappeared for approximately two months before resurfacing in detention. In May 2022, he conducted a hunger strike in prison and was force-fed via stomach tube — a practice that ALQST characterised as torture.
Ibrahim Saleh Ahmed al-Huwaiti, one of the delegation of local residents who had met the official commission charged with securing title to NEOM lands. His engagement with the state’s own process was reframed as evidence of conspiracy.
Ataullah Musa Muhammad al-Huwaiti, who had appeared in video clips discussing the conditions displaced residents were facing. His testimony became his indictment.
Two further men — Suleiman al-Huwaiti and Moussa al-Huwaiti — were also sentenced to death. Both have been forcibly disappeared since their convictions. Their current location and condition are unknown.
The charges against all five included “forming a terrorist cell” and “undermining national unity through online posts.” UN experts subsequently stated that these charges “do not appear to be in line with international law” and that the death penalty may only be imposed for “the most serious crimes, involving intentional killing.” Social media posts about eviction do not meet that threshold under any recognised legal framework.
On 23 January 2023, the Specialised Criminal Court of Appeal upheld the death sentences against Shadli, Ibrahim, and Ataullah. The cases remain subject to Supreme Court review. If the Supreme Court upholds them, the three men face execution.
The prison sentences imposed on other tribe members reflected a scale of punishment designed to make an example of an entire community:
Abdulilah Rashid Ibrahim al-Huwaiti received 50 years in prison followed by a 50-year travel ban — effectively a sentence of perpetual confinement and restriction for a man who opposed the demolition of his home.
Abdullah Dakhil Allah al-Huwaiti received the same: 50 years in prison and a 50-year travel ban.
Mahmoud Ahmad Mahmoud al-Huwaiti received 35 years.
Abdelnasser Ahmad Mahmoud al-Huwaiti received 27 years.
Ahmed Abdel Nasser al-Huwaiti, a university student who was 19 years old at the time of his arrest, received 20 years. His charges included “seeking to disrupt national cohesion through his Twitter account” and “expressing sympathy for a dead terrorist” — the dead terrorist being his own uncle, Abdul Rahim.
Maha Suleiman al-Qarani al-Huwaiti, a housewife and the only known woman among those detained, was arrested on 2 February 2021 at her home in Duba. State security forces raided her house in front of her five children, the youngest of whom was four months old. Her arrest stemmed from a Twitter post criticising the high cost of living and another tweet expressing condolences for Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti. She was initially sentenced to one year. On retrial — on the same charges, a violation of Saudi law — her sentence was increased to 23 years. She is held at Dhahban Central Prison in Jeddah.
ALQST’s February 2023 report “The Dark Side of Neom” documented a total of at least 47 tribe members arrested or detained: 5 sentenced to death, 15 sentenced to prison terms of 15 to 50 years, 19 detained with no information on their fate, and 8 released. The youngest detainee was 19. The only woman received the longest non-capital sentence of any female political prisoner in Saudi Arabia’s modern history.
The Workers
On 27 October 2024, ITV aired a documentary titled “Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia” that contained a figure the Saudi government has not refuted with specifics: approximately 21,000 foreign workers have died in Saudi Arabia since 2017 working on Vision 2030 projects. The breakdown: more than 14,000 Indian workers, more than 5,000 Bangladeshi workers, and more than 2,000 Nepali workers. A further 100,000 workers have reportedly gone missing — a category that encompasses those who fled their employers, those whose documentation was confiscated and who disappeared into the informal economy, and those whose deaths were never recorded.
The Saudi National Council for Occupational Safety and Health called the allegations “misinformation” with “unfounded statistics lacking credible sources.” NEOM itself reported 8 workplace fatalities annually, which it claimed was comparable to US construction industry rates of 9.6 per 100,000 employees. The comparison invites scrutiny: NEOM’s 140,000-strong migrant workforce operates under conditions that bear no resemblance to American construction sites, and the classification system that produces the official count has been systematically questioned by every independent body that has examined it.
The classification problem is the mechanism by which the death toll is managed. Between January and July 2024, 884 Bangladeshis died in Saudi Arabia. Eighty per cent of their deaths were attributed to “natural causes.” The Indian Embassy in Riyadh recorded 1,420 Indian migrant deaths in 2023; 74 per cent were classified as “natural causes.” Sixty-eight per cent of 870 Nepali deaths between 2019 and 2022 received the same classification. A 2019 Saudi pathology study — conducted by Saudi researchers — found that 100 per cent of the cases it reviewed had incorrect or absent causes of death listed. Seventy-five per cent listed no cause at all.
The “natural causes” designation is not a medical finding. It is an administrative category that eliminates the employer’s liability, voids the family’s claim to compensation, and erases the workplace from the death certificate. A 25-year-old Nepali worker who was electrocuted at work and died months later was classified as a “natural” death. His body was buried in Saudi Arabia without his family’s permission.
The Conditions
In December 2024, Human Rights Watch published “Die First, and I’ll Pay You Later,” a 79-page report based on 156 interviews with migrant workers employed on Saudi giga-projects. The title is a direct quotation. A worker who asked his manager for payment was told: “Die first, and I’ll pay you later.”
The report documented systematic wage theft across the giga-project supply chain. Of 112 workers interviewed in detail, 69 experienced payment delays and 71 experienced non-payment or underpayment. One Indian returnee was owed more than $39,000 in cumulative unpaid wages. Workers promised 1,200 riyals per month received 800. Workers promised 1,000 riyals per month received 800. The shortfall was not an error. It was the margin.
Saudi Oger, one of the Kingdom’s largest construction firms, owes an estimated 2.6 billion riyals — approximately $693 million — in unpaid wages to at least 21,000 workers from the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. As of February 2024, only 69 million riyals had been distributed. Of 8,830 Filipino claimants, only 1,352 had been compensated.
The kafala system — which ties a worker’s residency and employment to a specific employer throughout their stay in Saudi Arabia — is the infrastructure that makes the abuse self-sustaining. Workers cannot enter the country, transfer employment, or leave without explicit employer permission. Since 2021, only 618 workers have obtained final exit permits without employer consent — out of 13.4 million migrant workers in the country. Passport confiscation remains common despite being illegal. One worker’s company demanded four months’ salary for the return of his passport.
Saudi Arabia formally announced the abolition of the kafala system in June 2025. The system persists in practice. A Building and Wood Workers’ International survey of 193 migrant workers found that 85 per cent experienced debt bondage, 65 per cent experienced passport or document withholding, 63 per cent experienced restrictions on terminating or leaving their contracts, and 46 per cent experienced wage theft. The abolition is a legal fact. The bondage is a daily one.
Recruitment fees compound the trap. Of 130 workers surveyed by Human Rights Watch, 128 reported paying illegal recruitment fees to reach Saudi Arabia. The average fee paid by Bangladeshi workers was $3,715 — money borrowed at usurious interest rates or secured against family homes. Upon arrival, 47 workers were assigned jobs different from what they had been promised. Many were forced to sign contracts in Arabic that they could not read. The debt they carried from home became the chain that kept them at work.
Workers at The Line reported 16-hour work days, unpaid three-hour bus commutes each way, and approximately four hours of sleep. They described themselves as “trapped slaves” and “beggars.” One worker told HRW: “We are in the middle of nowhere. Embassies are very far away. If something goes wrong, there is nowhere we can go. There is also fear. Where do we go? Who do we tell?”
Another worker, describing the daily toll of heat exposure: “Every day, one or two workers faint, including during mornings and evenings. Sometimes on the way to work. Sometimes while working.” Saudi Arabia bans outdoor work between noon and 3 PM from 15 June to 15 September. Research has shown that extreme heat conditions frequently occur outside both the banned hours and the banned months. The ban protects the regulation, not the workers.
At the Masar project in Mecca — a $26 billion PIF-funded development — 600 workers protested eight months of unpaid wages. Workers had their phones smashed and were beaten for attempting to call for help on social media. The isolation of NEOM’s construction camps — vast settlements of identical housing blocks in the desert, surrounded by fences and accessed through guard houses, hundreds of miles from any town — makes even this level of resistance impractical.
The Executives
The Wall Street Journal published an investigation in September 2024 into Wayne Borg, an Australian national and former Fox Studios executive who had served as NEOM’s Managing Director of Media Industries since 2019. The report documented allegations including racist remarks about workers from the Indian subcontinent, whom he described as “f—ing morons.” After three manual workers died, Borg reportedly said: “A whole bunch of people die so we’ve got to have a meeting on a Sunday night.” On the subject of worker deaths more broadly, he remarked: “You can’t train for stupidity.” He was also reported to have told colleagues: “That is why white people are at the top of the pecking order.” He called a Black female colleague a “Black shit,” a characterisation he denied. He referred to Gulf women as “transvestites.” Michael Lynch was named acting sector head for media after the revelations.
Nadhmi al-Nasr, NEOM’s chief executive from 2018 until his departure in November 2024, was recorded in a meeting telling staff: “I drive everybody like a slave. When they drop down dead, I celebrate. That’s how I do my projects.” Former employees alleged he had threatened to “take a gun from under my desk and shoot you” during interactions with his communications team. His management culture was described by former staff as one that “belittled expatriates, made unrealistic demands, and neglected discrimination in the workplace.”
Antoni Vives, a senior executive who managed The Line project, also departed in late 2024. Vives had a 2021 Spanish court conviction for corruption at Barcelona city hall — a two-year suspended sentence and a fine for providing an associate with a fraudulent employment contract worth $165,000. He reportedly physically wrestled with a construction manager at NEOM. He was replaced alongside al-Nasr by Aiman al-Mudaifer, previously in charge of PIF’s Saudi real estate division.
The executive culture at NEOM was not an aberration from the project’s character. It was the project’s character expressed in conference rooms instead of construction sites.
The Architects
Architecture is a profession that operates on commissions. Clients provide the brief and the budget. Architects provide the vision and, implicitly, the legitimacy. The question of whether architects bear responsibility for the human conditions under which their designs are constructed is not new. NEOM made it unavoidable.
Norman Foster suspended his activities with NEOM’s advisory board in October 2018, days after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Several other advisory board members also distanced themselves. Foster’s withdrawal was swift and definitive — but it was prompted by the killing of a journalist, not the eviction of a tribe.
Morphosis, the Los Angeles firm founded by Thom Mayne, led the design for The Line and its 2.4-kilometre first phase, known as the “Hidden Marina.” Morphosis departed the project in July 2024. No public statement was made regarding human rights.
Coop Himmelb(l)au resigned citing human rights concerns — one of the only firms to do so explicitly.
Mecanoo resigned from NEOM. HOK confirmed it was “engaged in an early stage of design on The Line but is no longer participating in the project.” Adjaye Associates was dropped by NEOM in August 2024 following allegations of sexual misconduct against David Adjaye.
The firms that remained present a different profile. BIG, Bjarke Ingels’s Copenhagen-based practice, continued designing Oxagon. Zaha Hadid Architects continued work on a 330-metre crystalline skyscraper at Trojena. OMA designed resorts at the Gulf of Aqaba. UNStudio continued working on Trojena. Delugan Meissl Associated Architects took over Morphosis’s lead role on The Line. None of the remaining firms responded to Dezeen’s June 2024 inquiry about human rights concerns.
Lina al-Hathloul, head of monitoring and advocacy at ALQST, stated in an interview: “NEOM is built on the blood of Saudis and migrant workers, for the benefit of western and international companies.” She called on architecture studios to either campaign for the release of imprisoned protesters or walk away. Twenty-three studios were identified as working on NEOM. None commented publicly.
FIFA 2034
On 5 June 2024, Building and Wood Workers’ International filed a formal forced labour complaint against Saudi Arabia with the International Labour Organisation under Article 24 of the ILO Constitution. The complaint was based on the abuse of 21,000 workers owed unpaid wages, a survey of 193 migrants documenting debt bondage and passport confiscation, and representative cases from eight individual workers. Admissibility was upheld in January 2025. The complaint was supported by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Equidem, FairSquare, and Solidarity Centre.
Six months later, in December 2024, FIFA awarded Saudi Arabia the 2034 World Cup.
FIFA’s Bid Evaluation Report did not mention the ILO forced labour complaint. FIFA gave Saudi Arabia the highest score in World Cup bidding history: 419.8 out of 500. FIFA rated the Kingdom as “medium risk” despite the absence of labour unions, the absence of press freedom, and the active prosecution of women’s rights defenders. The Independent Context Analysis — conducted by AS&H Clifford Chance — acknowledged it had not carried out the full due diligence required by FIFA’s own human rights policy. Human Rights Watch wrote formally to FIFA President Gianni Infantino on 4 November 2024. FIFA did not respond.
The World Cup will require 11 new stadiums, 4 refurbished venues, 185,000 new hotel rooms, and substantial airport, road, and rail infrastructure. BWI estimates that 70,000 construction workers will be required for stadium development alone. FairSquare has predicted that the construction surge for NEOM and the 2034 World Cup will produce “thousands of unexplained deaths.”
The NEOM Stadium — planned as a World Cup venue sitting 350 metres above ground within The Line’s architectural envelope — creates the minimum viable version of a megacity that was supposed to house 9 million people. The stadium requires a sports neighbourhood with transport, accommodation, and an airport connection. It does not require the other 167.6 kilometres of mirrored superstructure. FIFA’s deadline has become the construction schedule that NEOM’s own ambitions could not enforce.
The Arithmetic
The numbers resist aggregation because they measure different things — years of imprisonment, individual deaths, billions of dollars, kilometres of unbuilt city. But the human ledger can be read.
One man shot dead for refusing to leave his home. Five men sentenced to death for social media posts opposing their eviction. At least 15 tribe members sentenced to prison terms of 15 to 50 years. One woman sentenced to 23 years for a tweet of condolence. At least 19 tribal members detained with no information on their fate. One woman and her family forcibly disappeared since November 2020, never brought before a court.
Twenty-one thousand foreign workers dead since 2017 on Vision 2030 projects. One hundred thousand workers reported missing. Eighty per cent of Bangladeshi worker deaths classified as “natural causes.” Seventy-five per cent of Saudi pathology reviews finding no cause of death listed at all.
Six hundred and ninety-three million dollars in documented unpaid wages owed to 21,000 workers by a single collapsed contractor. One hundred and twenty-eight out of 130 workers surveyed paying illegal recruitment fees to reach the job. Eighty-five per cent of surveyed workers experiencing debt bondage. Six hundred and eighteen workers — out of 13.4 million — obtaining exit permits without employer consent since 2021.
Fifty billion dollars spent. Two-point-four kilometres built. Zero residents.
The Specialised Criminal Court continues to process cases under the counter-terrorism law. The death sentences await Supreme Court review. The workers continue to arrive. The kafala system continues to operate. FIFA’s highest-ever bid score has been awarded. The consulting fees continue to be paid. The architecture firms that remained have not commented.
NEOM’s deputy CEO told Davos that $50 billion had been spent with the matter-of-factness of someone describing a quarterly budget. The families of the dead were offered $3,000. The tribe was offered a propaganda film. The worker who asked for his wages was told to die first.
The line was never built. The graves are real.
This analysis draws on reporting and documentation from Human Rights Watch (“Die First, and I’ll Pay You Later,” December 2024; migrant worker death investigation, May 2025); ALQST (“The Dark Side of Neom,” February 2023; political prisoner profiles; November 2024 briefing); FairSquare (“Underlying Causes,” May 2025); Building and Wood Workers’ International (ILO Article 24 complaint, June 2024); the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (press release, May 2023; communications AL SAU 11/2020); the Wall Street Journal (NEOM executive investigation, September 2024); ITV (“Kingdom Uncovered,” October 2024); the BBC (lethal force investigation, May 2024); Al Jazeera; Middle East Eye; Dezeen; MENA Rights Group; the European-Saudi Organisation for Human Rights; Bloomberg; the Financial Times; and contractor filings. Vision2030.AI is editorially independent and is not affiliated with NEOM, PIF, or any official Vision 2030 entity.