France. Between January and March 2021, police in Rwanda detained his son, Jacques Nkurunziza, a dual French-Rwandan national, three times. Nkurunziza told Human Rights Watch that on one occasion he was kept handcuffed for two days, with no water or food, and that several officers interrogated him for several hours, including about his father. After his release, the French embassy advised Nkurunziza to return to France for his own safety. A former military official, who did not want to be named or provide his location due to fears for the safety of his family, told Human Rights Watch that his family members are being targeted in Rwanda. He said that his relatives were being called onto television and radio where they were saying he was a “bad person.” He also told Human Rights Watch that two Rwandan intelligence agents visit his sister every morning and every evening. He said: “I know the system well; I was in it.” Saudi Arabia Saudi authorities have frequently retaliated against the family members of critics and dissidents living abroad. Omar Abdulaziz, a Canada-based Saudi dissident, said that Saudi authorities detained his two brothers in August 2018 in an effort to silence his online activism. Abdulaziz has a popular YouTube show where he voices criticisms of the Saudi Arabian government. At the time of writing, his brothers remain in jail. Omar Al-Jabri and Sarah Al-Jabri are the children of Saad Al-Jabri, a former top Saudi intelligence official. They have been targeted by Saudi authorities since 2017, when Omar was 18 and Sarah was 17, to coerce their father to return to Saudi Arabia from exile, including by placing them on a travel ban, freezing their bank accounts and financial assets, and interrogating them about their father’s whereabouts and activities. In 2020, Saad Al-Jabri sued Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in US Federal Court alleging that the crown prince had sent a hit squad to murder him in Canada in 2018. Soon after, in March 2020, the Saudi authorities arrested Al-Jabri’s children and held them incommunicado until January 2021, in an apparent effort to coerce him to return to Saudi Arabia. A Saudi court in November 2020 sentenced Omar and Sarah Al-Jabri in an unfair trial to nine and six and a half years in prison respectively, for “money laundering” and “attempting to escape” Saudi Arabia. In December 2020, an appeals court upheld their sentences in a secret hearing at which they were not present. 25 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | FEBRUARY 2024