Waleed Abulkhair

Waleed Abulkhair is a Saudi Arabian human-rights lawyer and activist who has been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since April 2014 on charges related to his legal advocacy and his criticism of the Saudi authorities. He was born on June 17, 1979, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and trained in law at King Abdulaziz University in the same city. He began practicing as an attorney in the early 2000s and was admitted to the Saudi bar.

His legal practice in the late 2000s focused on representing dissidents, women's-rights activists, and reform-minded figures whom other Saudi lawyers were unwilling to take on. He represented his brother-in-law Raif Badawi, the blogger sentenced in 2014 to ten years in prison and one thousand lashes, and a number of women campaigning for the right to drive. In 2008 he founded Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, an organization that documented detention and trial practices in the kingdom.

His public criticism of the Saudi judiciary led to a travel ban in 2012 and to a first short prison term in 2013. He was rearrested in April 2014 and tried before the newly established Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh, originally set up to handle terrorism cases. In July 2014 the court sentenced him to fifteen years in prison, followed by a fifteen-year travel ban, on charges that included "undermining the regime," "inciting public opinion," and "insulting the judiciary."

His sentence has been condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and a number of Western governments. He received the Olof Palme Prize in 2012 and the Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize in 2015 while in prison. Reports from his family describe extended periods of solitary confinement and denial of medical care; he has continued to communicate publicly through smuggled letters and through statements relayed by his ex-wife, the Saudi activist Samar Badawi, who left the kingdom for Canada.

His name Waleed is from the Arabic Walīd meaning "newborn" or "newly born child," a name with deep roots in Arabic naming and borne historically by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I. He has been known by this name throughout his legal and activist career.