Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion NEOM project envisions a futuristic megacity expanding across the Tabuk region, embodying the Kingdom’s ambitious drive toward modernization, economic diversification, and social reform under its Vision 2030. Promoted as an emblem of progress and innovation, NEOM is intended to reflect a forward-looking Saudi Arabia. However, for the al-Huwaitat tribe, whose ancestral lands lie directly in the path of this development, NEOM has come to represent repression and erasure. Since 2020, approximately 20,000 tribe members have faced forced evictions without adequate consultation or compensation. Those who resist face severe consequences, ranging from intimidation and house raids to arbitrary detention and even death sentences.
Dissent has been systematically criminalized under Saudi Arabia’s Counter-Terrorism Law, whose vague provisions allow peaceful opposition to be easily equated with terrorism. This framework has been used to justify harsh punishments under the pretext of safeguarding national security. As a result, at least 47 members of the al-Huwaitat tribe have been arrested or detained and handed severe sentences ranging from five to 50 years, and at times even facing the death penalty. They have been persecuted simply for exercising their right to free expression in protest of NEOM, a project that is destroying their livelihoods and forcibly ousting them from their homes.
Amid those unjustly detained is Ahmed Abdel Nasser al-Huwaiti. He was just a 19-year-old university student when he was arrested in 2020 and handed a 20-year sentence on charges of seeking to disrupt national cohesion through his Twitter account, and for “expressing sympathy for a dead terrorist.” Ahmed’s uncle, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, was a prominent tribal activist, killed by Saudi Special Forces after refusing to vacate his home. Ahmed’s only “offense” was publicly mourning this relative, whom he did not know had been classified as a “terrorist” by the state.
Ahmed’s father and uncle, Abdelnasser and Mahmoud al-Huwaiti, were also arrested and sentenced to 27 and 35 years, respectively, on similar charges, baselessly linking them to terrorism. Reports indicate that these men have endured solitary confinement, psychological and physical torture, and coerced confessions. These conditions are indicative of broader abuses within Saudi Arabia’s prison system, which routinely violate international human rights standards.
Beyond these unreasonably long prison sentences, five al-Huwaitat men have been handed death sentences. Despite international human rights law limiting the use of capital punishment to only the “most serious crimes,” Saudi authorities have increasingly expanded its use to non-lethal political offenses, including public criticism of state-backed projects like NEOM. In 2023, the death sentences of Shadli, Ibrahim, and Ataullah al-Huwaiti were upheld based on vague charges of forming a terrorist cell and undermining national unity through online posts that condemned the project’s abuses. Two others, Suleiman and Moussa al-Huwaiti, were similarly sentenced, yet have been forcibly disappeared ever since their convictions.
Despite recent statements commending Saudi Arabia’s release of some al-Huwaitat prisoners, this move does not offer complete freedom. Among those reportedly released was Abdullah Dakhil Allah al-Huwaiti, who had received a 50-year prison sentence and an additional 50-year travel ban for his online defense of his tribe. Yet even after release, such travel bans and restrictions often remain in place, essentially imprisoning individuals within the country and continuing their punishment by other means.
As Saudi Arabia pushes forward with ambitious projects like NEOM in the name of modernization and reform, it must also acknowledge and address the grave human rights violations committed in their pursuit. The forced displacement of the al-Huwaitat tribe, along with the arbitrary arrests, inhumane imprisonment, and death sentences of those who peacefully oppose the Kingdom’s actions, reflect a pattern of repression under the Counter-Terrorism Law. These practices and laws constitute evident breaches of the right to freedom of expression and flagrant violations of international standards. Rather than being a symbol of progress, NEOM has become a testament to repression.