17 Sep 2019; MEMO: Saudi Arabia has another senior Hamas official in detention, political and family sources told Al-Resalah on Monday. Businessman Abu Obaida Al-Agha is apparently being held in Dahban Prison in Jeddah, where the Saudi government keeps its political prisoners.
Sources revealed that Al-Agha has been in prison for more than 18 months, during which time very little information had been made available about his condition. In 2015, the US Treasury claimed that he was the head of Hamas’ financial committee in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Agha’s father, Khairi Al-Agha, was a prominent founder of Hamas who lived in Saudi Arabia, where he died in 2014. According to the sources, Abu Obaida Al-Agha holds a Saudi passport and “there is no reason for his detention.”
Early this month, rights groups and Hamas revealed that Saudi Arabia has arrested around 60 Palestinians over claims of links to the Palestinian resistance movement, stating that they had disappeared for months without their families knowing anything about their whereabouts. The NGO Euro-Med Observer reported one of the freed detainees as saying that he and the others are subject to verbal and physical torture.
Last Monday, Hamas revealed that the movement’s main official in the Kingdom for contact with the government, Mohammed Al-Khodari, 81, has also been arrested.
