Sons of jailed Saudi scholars urge Cambridge to drop plans to train Riyadh staff

The families of two scholars facing the death penalty in Saudi Arabia have appealed to the University of Cambridge to drop proposals to run staff training courses for Riyadh’s defence ministry.

The Guardian revealed last week that Cambridge’s Judge business school has been authorised to offer “leadership development” and “innovation management” training for the Saudi defence ministry’s staff, despite internal opposition within the university over the kingdom’s record on human rights and academic freedom.

The sons of the two men prosecuted for almost a decade by Saudi courts have called on Chris Smith, Cambridge’s chancellor, and Prof Deborah Prentice, its vice-chancellor, to halt any deal.

The letter says that a “prestigious partnership like this risks legitimising [the Saudi crown prince] Mohammed bin Salman’s false narrative of reform, despite evidence of continued human rights abuses. The Saudi authorities executed at least 356 people last year, the most in the Kingdom’s modern history.”

Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor is said to have called for the death penalty for the Islamic scholars and authors Hassan Farhan al-Maliki and Salman al-Odah on a “range of vaguely formulated charges”, according to international human rights organisations.

The joint letter from their respective sons Abobaker Almalki and Abdullah al-Odah says: “We feel compelled to reach out as families who have spent years watching our loved ones suffer for exercising the very freedoms that the university stands to protect.”

Salman al-Odah, pictured, and fellow Islamic scholar and author Hassan Farhan al-Maliki were both arrested in 2017. Photograph: Salman Al-Odah/Facebook

Al-Maliki, a religious reformer and commentator, has been imprisoned since 2017 and accused of multiple crimes including holding interviews with overseas media and possessing banned books.

In 2017, al-Odah was also arrested, on the basis of his social media posts, and accused of “mocking the government’s achievements” among other charges before the country’s secretive specialised criminal court.