EXCLUSIVE: Senior Saudi royal on hunger strike over purge | Middle East Eye
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Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz, the father of Alwaleed bin Talal and first progressive reformer in the House of Saud, has gone on a hunger strike in protest at the purge being carried out by his nephew Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the detention of three of his own sons.
The 86-year-old prince, who is the half brother of King Salman, stopped eating on 10 November, shortly after his first son, Alwaleed, was arrested on 4 November, and has lost 10 kilos in one month.
Last week, a feeding tube was inserted into him, but his condition at the King Faisal Hospital in Riyadh remains weak, according to several people who have visited him.
(...) Prince Talal is known as a liberal. A former finance minister in the government of King Saud (1953-64), he became known as the Red Prince in the 1960s for leading the Free Princes Movement which called for an end to the absolute monarchy.
But the royal family rejected the movement and Talal was forced into exile in Cairo before his mother was able to engineer a reconciliation with the family.
Talal campaigned for women’s rights long before the decision in September to allow Saudi women to drive. The prince said in one interview: “Saudi women will take their rights eventually... the march towards that should not stop and we have to accelerate this a bit."
The prince has continued to campaign for a constitutional monarchy and the instigation of the separation of powers, which he claims is enshrined in the constitution.
(...) In addition to Alwaleed and his brothers, other princes are still in detention. They include Turki bin Nasser, Turki bin Abdullah, and Fahd bin Abdullah bin Abdulrahman.
There is no definitive word of the fate of Abdulaziz bin Fahd. There are persistent accounts that he resisted arrest, and during the fight that ensued, he suffered a stroke or a heart attack. He is believed still to be alive, but in a vegetative state, according to several sources.
Mohammed bin Nayef, the former crown prince, ousted in a palace coup conducted before the November purge, and Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, who was arrested as part of the purge, have reportedly been released.
Officials close to MbS have staged public appearances for Miteb, including an encounter in which bin Salman publicly kissed the man he imprisoned and had mistreated physically. This piece of theatre was staged at an annual horse race for locally bred and imported horses in Janadriyah.
