Fully Authoritarian
World’s Population
Population
HRF classifies Saudi Arabia as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The Al Saud family has maintained centralized power over parts of the Arabian Peninsula since the 18th century through a combination of coercive violence, alliances with regional leaders and the religious elite, or ulema, and control over vast oil wealth. King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who came to power in 2015, and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS), who was appointed prime minister and de facto ruler in 2022, govern the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as absolute monarchs. As de facto ruler, MBS is known for diminishing the role of traditionally powerful ulema in governance, introducing liberalizing reforms such as lifting the ban on women drivers, and announcing sweeping economic diversification in the Vision 2030 initiative while facing sustained allegations of widespread human rights abuses against Saudi citizens, residents, and advocates living in exile to maintain a tight hold on power.
National elections are absent, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. The regime governs through royal decree and by appointing a Cabinet of Ministers and all 150 members of the Shura Council or Majlis ash-Shura, an advisory council that offers non-binding opinions on legislation. The regime prohibits political parties and retaliates against all forms of political opposition.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. Stipulations in the Press and Publications Law grant the regime significant authority over the flow of information in the country, and the regime abuses vague anti-cybercrime and counterterrorism laws to arbitrarily arrest and imprison those who express any opposition to the regime. Further, the regime directly harasses, tortures, and kills its opponents, exemplified by the transnational assassination of prominent dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The regime rules by decree, and routinely abuses its control over the regular courts and the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) to target political dissidents and to retaliate against judges who rule contrary to its interests.
National elections are absent, and there is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in Saudi Arabia, rendering moot any assessment of electoral competition. Per succession laws in the dynastic monarchy, power in the kingdom can only be held by sons or grandsons of the country’s founder, Abdulaziz ibn Saud. While dynamics within the large royal family can influence the choice of successor, the sitting monarch has sole authority to appoint his successor as Crown Prince, which is rubber-stamped by an Allegiance Council composed of senior princes from the house of Al Saud. The regime held limited local elections for the Kingdom’s municipal offices, which were introduced in 2005 and last took place in 2015; however, with a limited mandate to administer development initiatives and urban planning proposals, the outcome of elections for municipal councils had no capacity to influence or challenge the regime on its decisions and policies. Despite the lack of meaningful elections in the country, the regime continues to prohibit political parties, arbitrarily disqualify municipal candidates, and retaliate against all forms of political opposition, such as MBS’s 2019 crackdown against prominent religious scholars affiliated with the formerly influential Sahwa Movement.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. The regime has banned protests and abuses its ability to unilaterally promulgate vague and punitive laws that criminalize and censor all forms of dissenting speech to target critics, manipulate the flow of information in the country, and obstruct the work of civil society actors. The regime often resorts to violence and extrajudicial measures to retaliate against peaceful expression of dissent, including the use of harassment, torture, and assassination.
The regime seriously intimidates and obstructs the work of independent and dissenting actors through the abuse of vague laws such as the counterterrorism and anti-cybercrime laws, which criminalize and punish all forms of dissenting speech. In 2022, Nourah bint Saeed Al Qahtani, an active critic of the Saudi regime and its officials with no record of any violent or criminal activity, was sentenced to 45 years in prison under the counterterrorism and anti-cyber crime laws for “using the Internet to tear the [country’s] social fabric” and “violating the public order by using social media.” A few days later, the regime sentenced Salma Al-Shehab, a peaceful advocate for human rights and PhD student, to 34 years in prison, followed by a travel ban of the same length, under counterterrorism charges of “disturb[ing] public order, [and] destabiliz[ing] the security of society and the stability of the state” related to her social media activity on X. While Salma was released from prison in early 2025, she remains under a travel ban and Al-Qahtani remains imprisoned as of December 2025.
Such vague provisions also grant the regime pretext to retaliate against its opponents, as in the 2013 case of Raif Badawi, a prominent human rights activist and founder of the website “Free Saudi Liberals,” who was arrested for organizing a “Day of Liberalism” conference, convicted on charges of “insulting Islam,” “founding a liberal website,” and “adopting liberal thought,” and sentenced to 600 lashes and ten years in prison. The following year, Badawi’s lawyer, Waleed Abulkhair, received a 15-year prison sentence on charges of “inciting public opinion” after criticizing Saudi human rights violations in the media and on X, formerly known as Twitter. While Badawi was released after ten years in prison, he remains under a ten-year travel ban, and Abulkhair remains imprisoned as of December 2025. Apart from legal harassment and prolonged imprisonment, Saudi prosecutors frequently seek the death penalty under these laws, which is often carried out without public announcement or notifying the defendant’s family members. For example, on June 14, 2025, the regime secretly executed prominent journalist Turki Al Jasser, who was originally arrested in 2018 on the grounds of “terrorist crimes” and “destabilizing society and the state” for articles he published that exposed corruption within the royal family.
By abusing the Press and Publications Law of 2000, the regime heavily manipulates media coverage in its favor, censors content that it considers detrimental to its objectives, and maintains consolidated control over the flow of information in the country. Article 18 of the law stipulates that foreign printed materials must receive official approval and should refrain from containing content deemed offensive to Islam, the regime, the state’s key interests, or ethical standards. The regime has used this statute to ban international outlets from the country, such as London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed and its English-language counterpart, The New Arab, in 2016. Articles 19 and 24 further empower the regime to either authorize or reject printed materials, and Article 25 establishes that private individuals or entities can only publish journals with a license from the government, which requires direct approval from the prime minister, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Furthermore, in addition to surveillance and censorship on social media, the regime heavily manipulates the flow of information on platforms, as seen in 2019, when Meta banned over 350 accounts and pages disseminating false news favoring the Saudi regime, including attempts to undermine the credibility of advocacy organizations like Amnesty International and to promote its war in Yemen.
While there is a vibrant associational and charitable informal civil society in Saudi Arabia that can have indirect influence on debates over social policies, the regime unfairly shuts down major dissenting organizations and has taken systematic measures to close formal arenas for expressing disagreement, marginalize overtly political organizations, and retaliate against criticism. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development must approve all civil society activity, such as licensure, funding, and international collaboration, and has the right to disband and abolish groups deemed “disruptive to national unity.” The regime regularly refers cases involving dissenting civil society members to the Specialized Criminal Courts (SCC). For instance, in 2013, the regime shut down the prominent Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, and by 2016, the SCC had sentenced all of its members to prison on spurious charges.
The regime directly harasses and kills opponents and engages in transnational repression against dissidents abroad. In addition to harassment and intimidation tactics, including torture, used against dissidents and their family members, the regime in Saudi Arabia regularly implements the death penalty against opponents within the country and is known to assassinate dissidents in exile. In one of the most prominent examples of the regime’s crackdown on dissent, MBS ordered the assassination of Washington Post columnist and outspoken critic of the regime, Jamal Khashoggi, in 2018. Agents of the regime ambushed, killed, and dismembered Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Istanbul while he was seeking to obtain finalized divorce documents, as concluded by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings. Further, in July 2022, the National Assembly Party, an organization established by Saudi dissidents in exile in 2020 seeking to establish a democratic state, claimed that one of its key members, Manea Al Yami, had been assassinated in Beirut under orders from the regime.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The regime promulgates laws through royal decree and appoints the Council of Ministers and 150 members to the Shura Council to advise on legislation and manage the day-to-day affairs of government. The regime also maintains direct control over the judiciary, which, in practice, results in a court system that functions as a façade of an independent justice system with the goal of legitimizing or enforcing the regime’s decisions.
The regime has systematically undermined institutional independence to the point where cases or issues challenging the regime are no longer brought or are frequently dismissed. The regime often makes its cabinet and Shura Council appointments from different influential branches of the dynastic royal family to appease competing interests among powerful Al Saud members, which effectively ensures its consolidated control over state institutions. Under the de facto rule of MBS, the regime has taken complete control over the Supreme Judicial Council, which dictates the organization and functioning of Saudi Arabia’s judicial system, and assumed all prosecutorial duties under the Royal Court. The regime directly appoints all five full-time members to the Council, and the remaining part-time members are chosen by judicial seniority on the appellate and general courts, which the regime controls indirectly. Under Article 8 of the Law of the Judiciary, the regime-appointed Minister of Justice and the Supreme Judicial Council have the authority to interpret questions of Sharia (Islamic) Law. Article 8 also enables certain issues designated by the king to be reviewed by the Supreme Judicial Council, granting the regime control over the outcome of judicial cases due to its influence over the council’s composition.
Due to consolidated regime control over the judiciary, all cases in Saudi Arabia are heard in regime-controlled courts. Particularly since the 2011 country-wide protests that called for constitutional reforms and are sometimes considered part of the region-wide Arab Spring, the regime directs certain politically-sensitive cases and those involving dissidents to separate courts, most notably the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC). The SCC regularly holds defendants in incommunicado detention for 90 days, denies legal aid during interrogations, and instrumentalizes vague provisions in anti-cybercrime and counterterrorism laws to mete out harsh punishments in cases of peaceful political expression construed as national security threats. In 2023, the SCC sentenced retired teacher Muhammad Al Ghamdi to the death penalty under Articles 30, 34, 43, and 44 of the 2017 counterterrorism law for “describing the King or the Crown Prince in a way that undermines religion or justice,” “supporting a terrorist ideology,” “communication with a terrorist entity,” and “publishing false news with the intention of executing a terrorist crime,” while sharing content from prominent critics of the Saudi regime to fewer than 100 followers on X. In a similar case in 2022, the SCC issued a 45-year prison sentence and a further 45-year travel ban to Nourah bint Saeed Al Qahtani for social media posts expressing views against the regime, the longest-ever prison term given to a peaceful activist or to a woman in the country. In the case of humanitarian worker and OFF community member Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, who the regime arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared for three years as part of a crackdown on peaceful activists, government critics, and online commentators in March 2018, the SCC sentenced him to 20 years of imprisonment, followed by a 20-year travel ban, and has held him incommunicado from his family since April 2021.
Judges who rule contrary to regime interests or who are perceived as a threat to the regime consistently face regime retaliation. For instance, in February 2023, the SCC charged ten judges, six former SCC judges, and four former judges of the Kingdom’s Supreme Court, with “high treason” – a crime punishable by death – in a secret hearing. Although many of the former judges had previously issued harsh sentences against opponents on behalf of the regime, the organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) reports that they were forced to sign a forced confession that they had been too “lenient” during their tenure presiding over state security cases. Courts sentenced one of the judges, Abdulaziz bin Medawi Al Jaber, to 25 years in prison in May 2024 on charges that appear to be politically motivated, with no credible evidence presented against the accused.
HRF classifies Saudi Arabia as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The Al Saud family has maintained centralized power over parts of the Arabian Peninsula since the 18th century through a combination of coercive violence, alliances with regional leaders and the religious elite, or ulema, and control over vast oil wealth. King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who came to power in 2015, and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS), who was appointed prime minister and de facto ruler in 2022, govern the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as absolute monarchs. As de facto ruler, MBS is known for diminishing the role of traditionally powerful ulema in governance, introducing liberalizing reforms such as lifting the ban on women drivers, and announcing sweeping economic diversification in the Vision 2030 initiative while facing sustained allegations of widespread human rights abuses against Saudi citizens, residents, and advocates living in exile to maintain a tight hold on power.
National elections are absent, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. The regime governs through royal decree and by appointing a Cabinet of Ministers and all 150 members of the Shura Council or Majlis ash-Shura, an advisory council that offers non-binding opinions on legislation. The regime prohibits political parties and retaliates against all forms of political opposition.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. Stipulations in the Press and Publications Law grant the regime significant authority over the flow of information in the country, and the regime abuses vague anti-cybercrime and counterterrorism laws to arbitrarily arrest and imprison those who express any opposition to the regime. Further, the regime directly harasses, tortures, and kills its opponents, exemplified by the transnational assassination of prominent dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The regime rules by decree, and routinely abuses its control over the regular courts and the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) to target political dissidents and to retaliate against judges who rule contrary to its interests.
National elections are absent, and there is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in Saudi Arabia, rendering moot any assessment of electoral competition. Per succession laws in the dynastic monarchy, power in the kingdom can only be held by sons or grandsons of the country’s founder, Abdulaziz ibn Saud. While dynamics within the large royal family can influence the choice of successor, the sitting monarch has sole authority to appoint his successor as Crown Prince, which is rubber-stamped by an Allegiance Council composed of senior princes from the house of Al Saud. The regime held limited local elections for the Kingdom’s municipal offices, which were introduced in 2005 and last took place in 2015; however, with a limited mandate to administer development initiatives and urban planning proposals, the outcome of elections for municipal councils had no capacity to influence or challenge the regime on its decisions and policies. Despite the lack of meaningful elections in the country, the regime continues to prohibit political parties, arbitrarily disqualify municipal candidates, and retaliate against all forms of political opposition, such as MBS’s 2019 crackdown against prominent religious scholars affiliated with the formerly influential Sahwa Movement.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. The regime has banned protests and abuses its ability to unilaterally promulgate vague and punitive laws that criminalize and censor all forms of dissenting speech to target critics, manipulate the flow of information in the country, and obstruct the work of civil society actors. The regime often resorts to violence and extrajudicial measures to retaliate against peaceful expression of dissent, including the use of harassment, torture, and assassination.
The regime seriously intimidates and obstructs the work of independent and dissenting actors through the abuse of vague laws such as the counterterrorism and anti-cybercrime laws, which criminalize and punish all forms of dissenting speech. In 2022, Nourah bint Saeed Al Qahtani, an active critic of the Saudi regime and its officials with no record of any violent or criminal activity, was sentenced to 45 years in prison under the counterterrorism and anti-cyber crime laws for “using the Internet to tear the [country’s] social fabric” and “violating the public order by using social media.” A few days later, the regime sentenced Salma Al-Shehab, a peaceful advocate for human rights and PhD student, to 34 years in prison, followed by a travel ban of the same length, under counterterrorism charges of “disturb[ing] public order, [and] destabiliz[ing] the security of society and the stability of the state” related to her social media activity on X. While Salma was released from prison in early 2025, she remains under a travel ban and Al-Qahtani remains imprisoned as of December 2025.
Such vague provisions also grant the regime pretext to retaliate against its opponents, as in the 2013 case of Raif Badawi, a prominent human rights activist and founder of the website “Free Saudi Liberals,” who was arrested for organizing a “Day of Liberalism” conference, convicted on charges of “insulting Islam,” “founding a liberal website,” and “adopting liberal thought,” and sentenced to 600 lashes and ten years in prison. The following year, Badawi’s lawyer, Waleed Abulkhair, received a 15-year prison sentence on charges of “inciting public opinion” after criticizing Saudi human rights violations in the media and on X, formerly known as Twitter. While Badawi was released after ten years in prison, he remains under a ten-year travel ban, and Abulkhair remains imprisoned as of December 2025. Apart from legal harassment and prolonged imprisonment, Saudi prosecutors frequently seek the death penalty under these laws, which is often carried out without public announcement or notifying the defendant’s family members. For example, on June 14, 2025, the regime secretly executed prominent journalist Turki Al Jasser, who was originally arrested in 2018 on the grounds of “terrorist crimes” and “destabilizing society and the state” for articles he published that exposed corruption within the royal family.
By abusing the Press and Publications Law of 2000, the regime heavily manipulates media coverage in its favor, censors content that it considers detrimental to its objectives, and maintains consolidated control over the flow of information in the country. Article 18 of the law stipulates that foreign printed materials must receive official approval and should refrain from containing content deemed offensive to Islam, the regime, the state’s key interests, or ethical standards. The regime has used this statute to ban international outlets from the country, such as London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed and its English-language counterpart, The New Arab, in 2016. Articles 19 and 24 further empower the regime to either authorize or reject printed materials, and Article 25 establishes that private individuals or entities can only publish journals with a license from the government, which requires direct approval from the prime minister, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Furthermore, in addition to surveillance and censorship on social media, the regime heavily manipulates the flow of information on platforms, as seen in 2019, when Meta banned over 350 accounts and pages disseminating false news favoring the Saudi regime, including attempts to undermine the credibility of advocacy organizations like Amnesty International and to promote its war in Yemen.
While there is a vibrant associational and charitable informal civil society in Saudi Arabia that can have indirect influence on debates over social policies, the regime unfairly shuts down major dissenting organizations and has taken systematic measures to close formal arenas for expressing disagreement, marginalize overtly political organizations, and retaliate against criticism. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development must approve all civil society activity, such as licensure, funding, and international collaboration, and has the right to disband and abolish groups deemed “disruptive to national unity.” The regime regularly refers cases involving dissenting civil society members to the Specialized Criminal Courts (SCC). For instance, in 2013, the regime shut down the prominent Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, and by 2016, the SCC had sentenced all of its members to prison on spurious charges.
The regime directly harasses and kills opponents and engages in transnational repression against dissidents abroad. In addition to harassment and intimidation tactics, including torture, used against dissidents and their family members, the regime in Saudi Arabia regularly implements the death penalty against opponents within the country and is known to assassinate dissidents in exile. In one of the most prominent examples of the regime’s crackdown on dissent, MBS ordered the assassination of Washington Post columnist and outspoken critic of the regime, Jamal Khashoggi, in 2018. Agents of the regime ambushed, killed, and dismembered Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Istanbul while he was seeking to obtain finalized divorce documents, as concluded by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings. Further, in July 2022, the National Assembly Party, an organization established by Saudi dissidents in exile in 2020 seeking to establish a democratic state, claimed that one of its key members, Manea Al Yami, had been assassinated in Beirut under orders from the regime.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. The regime promulgates laws through royal decree and appoints the Council of Ministers and 150 members to the Shura Council to advise on legislation and manage the day-to-day affairs of government. The regime also maintains direct control over the judiciary, which, in practice, results in a court system that functions as a façade of an independent justice system with the goal of legitimizing or enforcing the regime’s decisions.
The regime has systematically undermined institutional independence to the point where cases or issues challenging the regime are no longer brought or are frequently dismissed. The regime often makes its cabinet and Shura Council appointments from different influential branches of the dynastic royal family to appease competing interests among powerful Al Saud members, which effectively ensures its consolidated control over state institutions. Under the de facto rule of MBS, the regime has taken complete control over the Supreme Judicial Council, which dictates the organization and functioning of Saudi Arabia’s judicial system, and assumed all prosecutorial duties under the Royal Court. The regime directly appoints all five full-time members to the Council, and the remaining part-time members are chosen by judicial seniority on the appellate and general courts, which the regime controls indirectly. Under Article 8 of the Law of the Judiciary, the regime-appointed Minister of Justice and the Supreme Judicial Council have the authority to interpret questions of Sharia (Islamic) Law. Article 8 also enables certain issues designated by the king to be reviewed by the Supreme Judicial Council, granting the regime control over the outcome of judicial cases due to its influence over the council’s composition.
Due to consolidated regime control over the judiciary, all cases in Saudi Arabia are heard in regime-controlled courts. Particularly since the 2011 country-wide protests that called for constitutional reforms and are sometimes considered part of the region-wide Arab Spring, the regime directs certain politically-sensitive cases and those involving dissidents to separate courts, most notably the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC). The SCC regularly holds defendants in incommunicado detention for 90 days, denies legal aid during interrogations, and instrumentalizes vague provisions in anti-cybercrime and counterterrorism laws to mete out harsh punishments in cases of peaceful political expression construed as national security threats. In 2023, the SCC sentenced retired teacher Muhammad Al Ghamdi to the death penalty under Articles 30, 34, 43, and 44 of the 2017 counterterrorism law for “describing the King or the Crown Prince in a way that undermines religion or justice,” “supporting a terrorist ideology,” “communication with a terrorist entity,” and “publishing false news with the intention of executing a terrorist crime,” while sharing content from prominent critics of the Saudi regime to fewer than 100 followers on X. In a similar case in 2022, the SCC issued a 45-year prison sentence and a further 45-year travel ban to Nourah bint Saeed Al Qahtani for social media posts expressing views against the regime, the longest-ever prison term given to a peaceful activist or to a woman in the country. In the case of humanitarian worker and OFF community member Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, who the regime arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared for three years as part of a crackdown on peaceful activists, government critics, and online commentators in March 2018, the SCC sentenced him to 20 years of imprisonment, followed by a 20-year travel ban, and has held him incommunicado from his family since April 2021.
Judges who rule contrary to regime interests or who are perceived as a threat to the regime consistently face regime retaliation. For instance, in February 2023, the SCC charged ten judges, six former SCC judges, and four former judges of the Kingdom’s Supreme Court, with “high treason” – a crime punishable by death – in a secret hearing. Although many of the former judges had previously issued harsh sentences against opponents on behalf of the regime, the organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) reports that they were forced to sign a forced confession that they had been too “lenient” during their tenure presiding over state security cases. Courts sentenced one of the judges, Abdulaziz bin Medawi Al Jaber, to 25 years in prison in May 2024 on charges that appear to be politically motivated, with no credible evidence presented against the accused.
