According to the activist group, The Prisoners of Conscience, via Twitter, four jailed Saudi scholars have begun a hunger strike to protest their detention in Saudi prisons.

Sheikh Abdullah al-Hamed staged an open-ended hunger strike with the aim to protest ill-treatment in prison as per the group.

The other detainees, Mohammed Fahd al-Qahtani, Abdulkarim al-Khader, Fawzan al-Harbi and Abdul Rahman al-Hamed are the other scholars participating in the hunger strike and calling for the immediate release of all jailed activists from prison.

The son of jailed preacher Salman al-Ouda, Abdullah al-Ouda, showed support for the strike and tweeted that the “strike draws the attention to systematic violations against all detainees.”

The Saudi authorities have made no comment on the report.

ANNISA ESSACK