Standardised reference for journalists, editors, translators, and advocacy partners. Includes verified name variants in four scripts, professional descriptors as used across publication platforms, social handles, author page URLs, and biography copy in three lengths.
Copy any biography block directly for press use. Verify the current affiliation note before publication. All handle and URL information is current as of April 2026.
The subject uses different name forms across language contexts. All refer to the same person.
Different outlets have used different descriptors. These are the verified forms as published on each platform.
Three lengths for different contexts. Copy directly. These are the approved versions for use in press releases, event programmes, and institutional publications.
Saudi journalist and human rights defender, detained in Bulgaria since October 2021.
Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi is a Saudi journalist and human rights defender, born in Riyadh in 1993. He has been held in Bulgarian administrative immigration detention since 23 October 2021 without criminal charge. His case is pending before the European Court of Human Rights as Al-Khalidi v. Bulgaria (No. 26364/24). He continues to write and publish from detention.
Abdulrahman Al-Khalidi is a Saudi journalist and human rights defender, born in Riyadh in 1993. He has been held in Bulgarian administrative immigration detention continuously since 23 October 2021, making his administrative detention one of the longest documented in the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, with no published case of longer duration known (source: ECHR HUDOC database, Al-Khalidi v. Bulgaria, App. No. 26364/24). He has never been charged with any criminal offence.
Bulgarian courts have ordered his release on two occasions (January 2024 and March 2025); neither order has been executed by the State Agency for National Security. The Supreme Administrative Court of Bulgaria has annulled three consecutive lower-court asylum refusals (2023–2025), each time finding procedural errors that were then repeated. His European Court of Human Rights application, Al-Khalidi v. Bulgaria (No. 26364/24), was communicated to the Bulgarian Government in April 2025 and is currently pending before Strasbourg.
He is recognised as a Human Rights Defender at Risk by Front Line Defenders. From detention, he continues to write essays and analysis published in Arabic, English, Bulgarian, and Italian across Substack, Melting Pot Europa, Marginalia, and other platforms.
For the complete bibliography of published works, see the writings archive.
For the legal trajectory and ECHR case, see the ECHR case page and the full legal chronology.
For press materials including approved portrait photographs, see the media kit.