Portuguese national Tiago Alves has been detained in Saudi Arabia without charge since December 2025, one of a growing number of foreign nationals arrested while visiting Saudi Arabia. Alves has suffered a number of due process violations, and there are security concerns about the area where he is being held, at Abha Prison in the south of the country.
Alves was detained in Medina on 31 December 2025 while travelling with his wife, three children/stepchildren and his mother-in-law. According to his family, security officers stopped them as they were leaving a museum, took Alves away in one vehicle and the rest of the family in another. The family members were detained for several weeks before being deported to the United Kingdom, where they had been residing. Alves remains in detention.
Nearly ten months after his arrest, Alves has still not been formally notified of the charges against him, in contravention of the Saudi kingdom’s own legislation. Under Article 114 of Saudi Arabia’s Law of Criminal Procedure, the period of investigation must not exceed 180 days from the date of arrest – except in exceptional circumstances where an extension is granted by judicial order – before the detainee is either charged or released. Alves has not been informed of any judicial order extending his detention.
He has also been subjected to various due process violations. He has no legal representation, has received only one visit from Portuguese consular officials, and was questioned without either a lawyer or an interpreter present, despite his limited Arabic and difficulties understanding what was being said to him.
There are also serious concerns about Alves’s conditions of detention and personal safety. He has been transferred between several detention facilities and was most recently moved to Abha Prison. There, he has been forced to sleep on the floor in a hallway because of overcrowding, with the lights kept on, and in conditions conducive to the spread of disease. At other times he has been forced to share a cell with an inmate with tuberculosis. He has also been deprived of clean clothing, reading materials, including access to a Qur’an, and clean tap water for performing wudu.
Abha Prison itself, meanwhile, is located in the Asir region of southern Saudi Arabia, an area facing heightened security risks amid escalating hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Houthi forces in Yemen. Several foreign governments, including the United States and the United Kingdom, advise against travel to the area because of these risks.
Nadyeen Abdulaziz, Monitoring and Advocacy Officer at ALQST, comments: “Tiago Alves’s case highlights persistent arbitrary detention practices in Saudi Arabia, and the appalling and inhumane conditions that prisoners routinely endure in the kingdom’s harsh and opaque prison system.”
Alves’s case is one of a growing number in which foreign nationals have been arrested while travelling to Saudi Arabia and subjected to prolonged detention, with multiple due process violations and in unacceptable conditions. Several have later been subjected to grossly unfair trials and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences for exercising their right to free expression – a right long denied by the Saudi authorities to their own citizens and residents. This suppression of free speech is now being extended to some foreign visitors.
ALQST urges the Saudi authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Tiago Alves. Failing that, they must clarify any charges against him and try him in accordance with internationally recognised fair trial standards, while safeguarding his safety and welfare and ensuring he has regular access to his family, a lawyer of his choosing, and Portuguese consular officials.
