Abdullah Al-Ansari has been an adviser at the Ministry of Interior since December 2018.
He has also served as the director-general of legal affairs and international cooperation at the ministry, and was a board member of the Human Rights Commission from 2009 to 2015.
Al-Ansari got his bachelor’s degree in Islamic studies from King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah in 1990, his master’s in Islamic jurisprudence from Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah in 1997, and a second master’s, in comparative law, from Harvard in 2000. He has a doctorate specializing in national security laws, international law, comparative law, and human rights from the University of Virginia.
He served as an assistant professor in the Department of Islamic Studies at King Abdul Aziz University from 2009 to 2010, and was a senior fellow specializing in legal affairs and the affairs of Arab countries and the Gulf in the Arabian Peninsula & Gulf Studies Program at the University of Virginia from 2007 to 2010.
Al-Ansari has been a Shoura Council member since December 2016. He has written publications and published research covering law, human rights and combating extremism and terrorism.
He recently led the Saudi delegation at the 28th session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Geneva. He presented a review of the Kingdom’s efforts in crime prevention and criminal justice.
The commission heard that the Kingdom’s security services had uncovered and disrupted active terrorist cells across the country. The delegation said the Kingdom continued to lay the foundations for a long-term strategy to defeat extremism.
