The Case of Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Dukheil
Confronting fears of retribution, the son of an imprisoned Saudi academic is now campaigning for his father’s release
Last spring, during the holy month of Ramadan, Abdulhakim Al-Dukheil received a flood of texts and voicemails from his relatives in Saudi Arabia. Each message relayed the same, grim news: his father had been arrested by government security forces.
Abdulaziz Al-Dukheil, a round-faced, balding academic who donned thin ovular glasses and a thinning mustache, did not fit the typical mold of a national security threat. The Saudi economist expended very little of his intellect or charisma on political squabbles, according to his son.
“My father doesn’t have a group or a company that’s fighting with the government,” Abdulhakim insisted. “He doesn’t have any agenda; he’s a businessman.”
Indeed, Al-Dukheil senior dedicated much of his 47-year career to enriching the House of Saud. He served as the kingdom’s deputy finance minister in the 1970s. He later headed the Saudi Investment Bank in 1982 and vouched for the country’s economic interests at a number of international economic summits.
In 1979, Al-Dukheil established his namesake financial advisory company, Al-Dukheil Financial Group, which would go on to advise some of Saudi Arabia’s biggest corporations, like petrochemical giant Aramco. According to Al-Dukheil’s bio on his company’s website, he held a number of positions at prominent universities later in his career, teaching at Oxford University, the American University of Beirut, and Georgetown University. [I was unable to independently verify these appointments].
Despite these ties — or perhaps partly because of them — agents from the Mabahith, the Saudi domestic security agency, apprehended Al-Dukheil in his home and threw him in prison.
His crime?
Al-Dukheil never appeared to receive a formal sentencing. Abdulhakim says the government accused his father of stealing money from the kingdom’s coffers. But he suspects that the monarchy had a far more cynical (and frivolous) motivation: his father acknowledged the passing of an imprisoned Saudi reformer.
Al-Dukheil had paid tribute to the late Abdullah Al-Hamid, a vocal Saudi dissident and human rights advocate who prodded for reform in the kingdom for decades.
“Dr. Abdullah Al-Hamid, the man who was devoted to his homeland and to high values, morals and sincere citizenship, has passed on to his God,” Al-Dukheil wrote in a tweet. “But he did not leave the hearts of the faithful to the homeland of the believers, by providing advice without fear or shame, and without vested interest. May God have mercy on you, Abu Bilal.”
Al-Hamid’s demands for change landed him in jail several times over the course of his lifetime. The Saudi reformer drew his final breaths in a Saudi prison last April, languishing in his cell for weeks after suffering a stroke and receiving inadequate medical attention, according to reports.
Al-Dukheil was one of several Saudi writers and academics who was arrested by state security forces for eulogizing the late activist. Such arrests had, by this time, become commonplace in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman — whom Abdulhakim describes as a “baby” — launched a bloody, relentless campaign to crush dissent in his realm in 2016.
The crown prince, once praised as a reformer himself, showcased his knack for violent repression to the world with the grizzly murder of journalist and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi.
“If he wakes up in the morning and doesn’t drink good coffee, he’ll say ‘this guy dies,’” Abdulhakim told me, only half-jokingly.
The Mabahith did not respond to an email request for comment.
Al-Dukheil was among the latest high-profile victims of MBS’s unrelenting campaign to wring out every last drop of dissent in the kingdom. Abdulhakim first revealed his father’s imprisonment in a widely-circulated video published in July 2020 by Saudi human rights group “Prisoners of Conscience.”
According to his son, Al-Dukheil was being detained in the maximum security Al-Ha’ir prison, a notorious clearinghouse for detained journalists, businesspeople and political dissidents who have fallen out of the good graces of the Saudi regime. Al-Ha’ir is particularly infamous for its shoddy facilities, which are often the venue for the torture and abuse of prisoners.
Al-Dukheil had the misfortune of being imprisoned by the Saudi government once before in 2015, when Saudi security forces arrested the economist for criticizing Saudi government policy during a lecture, his son says.
Abdulhakim said his father had for decades been criticizing what he perceived as Saudi government corruption and financial mismanagement. Al-Dukheil senior left government work in the 1980s after growing frustrated with the cronyism and patronage that plagued the kingdom’s economic system, Abdulhakim says.
He spoke openly about Saudi economic woes in his books and his lectures at universities across the world. He warned of the dangers of economic inequality in the kingdom and urged the government to ween off oil. In 2013, two years before his first arrest, Al-Dukheil published a book forebodingly titled “Saudi Government Revenues and Expenditures: A Financial Crisis in the Making.”
Abdulhakim says he hasn’t been able to contact his father since his arrest.
“I don’t know what he’s doing now — is he eating? Is he sick? Is he sleeping?” he said, clearly flustered. “I cannot call him. I cannot call my mom. I cannot call my brother.”
Abdulhakim is currently residing outside Saudi Arabia, away from much of his immediate family. He is afraid, he confessed, that the Saudi government will harm him and his other family members for speaking out. But, as the anniversary of his father’s detention approaches, Abdulhakim is confronting fears of retribution to campaign publicly for his release; after months of relative quiet, the urge to speak publicly about his father’s detention became overpowering.
“My father is everything in my life,” he said.
He has already taken to Twitter, circulating slickly edited videos advocating for his father’s release and bashing Saudi government cruelty. He has published op-eds through large media outlets like USA Today in an attempt to drum up the sympathy of the American public.
I asked what he plans to do next in his campaign to free his father.
“Anything,” he said, with equal parts desperation and determination.
Have comments, questions, or tips? Feel free to email me at jmcreporting7@gmail.com or send me a DM on Twitter @jamesmillianca
