Saudi dissident released from years-long Bulgaria detention

A Saudi dissident who unsuccessfully sought asylum in Bulgaria was released on Friday after nearly five years in detention in the Balkan nation, his lawyer told AFP.

Abd al-Rahman al-Khalidi's detention was among the longest faced by an asylum seeker in Bulgaria, according to the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC).

Although freed, Khalidi still faces a deportation order and must now report to a local police station once a week, his lawyer Diana Radoslavova told AFP.

Khalidi was detained after entering Bulgaria from Turkey in 2021 to seek asylum and was subsequently kept in immigration detention as Bulgarian authorities pursued his removal to Saudi Arabia.

"The unprecedentedly long period of de facto administrative detention is over," Radoslavova said.

"His case will forever remain a stain on Bulgaria," she said, adding she feared that the migration system would "increasingly rely on measures like these".

Earlier on Friday, the BHC announced Khalidi's release on Facebook, saying he had been transferred from the closed detention centre in Lyubimets in southern Bulgaria to Sofia to finalise the procedure for his release.

BHC represents Khalidi before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in a pending case challenging the length of his detention.

In 2024, Khalidi told AFP that he had been served with a detention order while still appealing the decision to not grant him asylum.

International human rights organisations have repeatedly urged Bulgaria not to deport Khalidi to Saudi Arabia, warning he could face persecution because of his activism.

In 2011, Khalidi was active during rare demonstrations in eastern Saudi Arabia, where the country's Shia minority is concentrated, following the Middle East's Arab Spring uprisings.