Rare protests taking place in Saudi Arabia

• Detentions without trial are a common practice in the Arab Middle East
• Saudi Arabia is one of the most tightly policed countries in the world
• Protests seem to have been influenced by Arab Spring demonstrations

Families of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia have been doing what was once unthinkable in this kingdom and holding small protests outside prisons and government buildings to demand the release of inmates, some of whom have been held without charges for years.

Detentions without trial are a common practice in the Arab Middle East but have gained new notoriety as as motivating factor behind the Arab Spring uprisings that have swept the region.

Though none suggests an uprising is in the offing in Saudi Arabia, the recent protests there were a rare phenomenon in one of the most tightly policed countries in the world.

"Most protesters are members of the families of political detainees arrested in 2003," says Christoph Wilke, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, which has been criticizing Saudi Arabia's repression of protests.

After a wave of deadly attacks in the kingdom by al-Qaeda terrorists from 2003 to 2006, authorities launched a crackdown on members of the group founded by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden. But others were swept up in the dragnet as well.

"These arrests included at the time a wide spectrum of people, many of whom simply opposed the regime," Wilke said.

On Sept. 23, dozens of Saudi men were arrested after staging protests outside the Tafiya Prison north of Riyadh where hundreds of alleged Islamist extremists have been held since the government launched a crackdown on a local al-Qaeda branch in 2003.

On Tuesday, about 100 protesters that included women and children rallied in front of the government's Saudi Human Rights Commission for the same cause.

Protests are illegal in the Saudi monarchy, and public assemblies of any kind are banned outside of soccer games and the holy hajj pilgrimage. Wilke and other observers said the protests came as a surprise in a country where authorities tolerate little dissent. According to the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), there are 30,000 political prisoners in the kingdom.

The families of the detained turned to social activism after years of empty promises from local authorities, Wilke said.

"Protesters are becoming creative; they recently organized a flash mob in a mall that was later posted on YouTube, and they are trying to attract media attention," he said.

About 60 people were arrested this week, and around 30 are still being held by the authorities. According to Abdel Karim Khadr, founder of the ACPRA, this figure included 14 children ages 7 to 13. Demonstrators were beaten with electric rods.

"Ironically, some of the protesters are now being held in Tafiya Prison with the relatives whose rights they were defending in recent demonstrations, " Khadr said.

In spite of their small size, these demonstrations seem to have been influenced by the other protests taking place across the Middle East as part of the Arab Spring. One man set himself on fire in the town of Samtah in southwest Saudi Arabia in January 2011.

Demonstrations also took place in the eastern provinces against the detention without charge of nine Shiite men on suspicion of being involved in the Khobar terrorist attacks on a U.S. military compound in 1996. The movement later addressed anti-Shiite discrimination, spurred on by the Saudi intervention last year in the anti-government protests in Bahrain, a Sunni-run country with a Shiite majority.

There was also a demonstration following the arrest of prominent Saudi Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

To avoid widespread unrest, the kingdom introduced several economic and social measures worth $130 billion. But at the same time it passed a religious edict banning public demonstrations.

Wilke says the protest movement to free detainees as well as that to end anti-Shiite discrimination will not grow unless protesters find sympathetic members outside their core elements.

But Khadr predicts more unrest.

"There will be an increase in protests if no solution is brought forward by the government," he said. "People are asking for clearer rules of arrest and prosecution and more freedom."