The United States government, including Congress, should address Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's expected visit to Washington on November 18, 2025, 10 human rights and press freedom organizations said today.
The Trump administration is expected to welcome the crown prince on his first visit to the United States since he approved the gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist and US legal resident Jamal Khashoggi and oversaw an unprecedented rights crackdown in Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration and Congress should press the crown prince to end his government's rights violations and release detained activists, writers, and journalists, and end systematic repression of free expression. In October 2018, Saudi agents acting on bin Salman's orders murdered and dismembered Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, with US intelligence agencies concluding that the crown prince personally approved the operation to silence his critic.
Since bin Salman's last visit to the United States in March 2018, Saudi authorities have presided over one of the worst periods for human rights and freedom of expression in the country's modern history. Human rights organizations, including the undersigned, have documented a surge in executions and the silencing of independent voices in recent years without apparent due process, including the execution of Turki al-Jasser, a Saudi journalist known for exposing corruption within the Saudi royal family. Others executed include two young men for acts related to the exercise of their freedom of expression allegedly committed while they were still children, Jalal al-Labbad and Abdullah al-Derazi. These executions raise concerns that the Saudi government is using the death penalty to crush peaceful dissent.
According to data from the official Saudi Press Agency, Saudi authorities have executed at least 300 people so far in 2025, including four women. They are on course to exceed the record number of 345 executions in 2024, in contradiction of their own commitments to limit the use of the death penalty. Rampant due process violations and systemic abuses against defendants in Saudi Arabia's courts and criminal justice system make it highly unlikely that any of those executed in recent years received a fair trial.
More than 160 foreign nationals have been executed, the majority for non-lethal drug offences. United Nations legal experts contacted the Saudi authorities in December 2024, urging them to stop the executions of 26 Egyptian men on death row. Most of these men have since been executed.
Saudi authorities continue to harshly repress any dissent, including by arresting human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents, and by handing down long sentences after unfair trials on charges related to peaceful online expression. The death sentence of another child defendant convicted of protest-related offences, Youssef al-Manasif, was recently upheld by the court of appeal, alongside that of Jalal al-Labbad's brother, Mohammed. A third brother, Fadel al-Labbad, was executed in 2019.
Earlier in 2025, the authorities released dozens of people serving long prison terms for peacefully exercising their rights. However Saudi authorities continue to imprison and arbitrarily detain many more. Released prisoners continue to face restrictions, such as arbitrary travel bans and having to wear an ankle monitor.
Rights groups continue to document rampant abuses in Saudi Arabia's criminal justice system including, long periods of detention without charge or trial, denial of legal assistance, reliance on torture-tainted confessions as the sole basis for conviction, and other systematic violations of due process and fair trial rights.
Migrant workers face widespread labor abuses across employment sectors and geographic regions. Saudi authorities fail to protect them from abuse or to provide a remedy for avoidable workplace-related accidents and preventable deaths, or to compensate their families. Saudi authorities should investigate workplace safety incidents, and ensure timely and adequate compensation for families, including through mandatory life insurance policies and survivors' benefits.
The Trump administration and US Congress should avoid emboldening Saudi repression by remaining silent about these abuses. The administration should use its leverage, including the desire of Saudi Arabia to enter into a more formal defense pact with the United States, to press Saudi authorities to make concrete commitments on human rights and press freedom during bin Salman's visit, including the following:
- Immediately releasing all peaceful dissidents, journalists, and activists named in the US. State Department's 2023 and 2024 Country Report on Human Rights Practices on Saudi Arabia, including:
- Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, a humanitarian aid worker currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for peaceful satirical posts he published on X.
- Manahel al-Otaibi, a fitness trainer and social media influencer arrested for using her online platform to call for women's rights.
- Sarah and Omar al-Jabri, the daughter and son of a former high ranked Saudi official, who were arrested to pressure their father to return to the country.
- Mohammed Ahmed al-Hazza al-Ghamdi, a Saudi cartoonist arrested in 2018 in connection with his work as a cartoonist.
- Salman al-Odah, one of Saudi Arabia's best-known religious scholars and reformers who campaigned for political reform and human rights.
- Waleed Abu al-Khair, a human rights defender serving a 15-year prison sentence as a result of his human rights activism.
- Lifting arbitrary travel bans on human rights defenders, bloggers, and others, including those imposed on US citizens, including:
- Saad Almadi, a 75-year-old father and US citizen from Florida who has been trapped in Saudi Arabia for more than four years.
- Mohammed al-Qahtani, a 60-year-old human rights defender and academic trapped in Saudi Arabia under a 10-year travel ban, preventing him from reuniting with his wife and five children-all of whom are US citizens- in the United States.
- Loujain al-Hathloul, a 36-year-old women's rights activist, who continues to be unlawfully prevented from leaving Saudi Arabia despite the official expiration of her travel ban in 2023.
- Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was freed in 2022 after completing a 10-year sentence, yet cannot reunite with his family in Canada because of a 10-year travel ban.
- Imposing a moratorium on executions, with a view to abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.
- Pending full abolition, amend Saudi legislation to remove death penalty provisions that breach international law, including its use for drug-related offenses, individuals accused of offenses committed as children, and vaguely defined "terrorist acts."
- Commute the sentences of all those on death row, including individuals accused of offenses committed as children and those convicted of non-lethal offenses.
- Ensuring that all migrant worker deaths, regardless of perceived cause, time, and place are properly investigated and that families of deceased workers are treated with dignity and receive fair and timely compensation.
- Fully dismantling the kafala (sponsorship) system in full in which employers control the status of migrant workers, making the state the sponsor for migrant workers, and ensuring that migrant workers' entry, residence, and work visas are not tied to employers.
