SAUDI ARABIA – TURKEY Riyadh: Islamic preacher sentenced to 12 years in prison for praying in Hagia Sophia

The incident happened in 2014, when the controversial former basilica was still a museum, before being converted into a mosque. Abdullah Basfar, a former Islamic studies teacher, spent two years in pretrial detention before his trial. The tensions of the time between Riyadh and Ankara, among the reasons for the arrest.

Riyadh () – A Saudi court sentenced an Islamic preacher to 12 years in prison for having led a prayer in the former basilica – now a mosque – of Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, in 2014. The sentence confirms, once again, the repressive policies of the leadership of the Wahhabi kingdom against activists, dissidents and even religious who do not align with institutional guidelines -or, more simply, against those who do not like the regime in power.

According to reports from the activist NGO Prisoners of Conscience, the court tried and sentenced the imam and preacher Abdullah Basfar on October 12, but the news was released a few days ago. He was accused of “accepting an invitation to lead the prayers of the faithful in the courtyard [entonces todavía un museo] of the Hagia Sophia mosque in Turkey”. In a statement, the activist movement states: “We stigmatize the sentence and call for his immediate and unconditional release”.

Abdullah Basfar, one of the kingdom’s most influential religious figures, once served as a professor of Sharia and Islamic studies at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz University. From being a respected personality, in 2020 he became one of many targets of the repressive policy of Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) and his circle of power. It all started after the spread of a prayer that took place in Hagia Sophia in 2014, which was circulated online and quickly went viral. The sheikh remained in preventive detention for two years, awaiting trial; during that period he was subjected to interrogations in which he suffered mistreatment and abuse.

The Saudi authorities never clarified the exact reasons for his arrest or the charges against him, but the suspicion is that Riyadh wanted to punish the initiative of leading a prayer on Turkish soil, at a time when relations between the two countries were marked by the tension. The fracture widened in the following years, and especially as of 2018, after the murder of the dissident journalist jamal khashoggi by order of Bin Salman. Relations were recently resumed, inaugurating a new stage between the two leading countries of the Sunni Muslim world.

In April, the first sentence of Ramadan in Hagia Sophia, UNESCO heritage. This is the old Christian basilica which, like the one in Chora, was converted into a museum at the beginning of the 20th century under the government of Ataturk. In 2020 it was transformed into a mosque, according to the nationalist and islamic politics imposed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to disguise the economic crisis and retain power. After the decree sanctioning its conversion into a mosque, the Muslim authorities covered the images of Jesus, the frescoes and the icons that show the Christian roots of the building with a white curtain. The decision triggered a political-religious controversy that transcended national borders.