A Saudi citizen, a student from the University of Leeds in the UK, was accused of publishing and sharing posts by opponents and activists against the Saudi regime. She was sentenced to 34 years in prison, followed by a 34-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia
A Saudi student from the University of Leeds in Great Britain who returned to the Kingdom on vacation was sentenced to 34 years in prison for operating a Twitter account that published and shared tweets critical of opponents and activists against the Saudi regime.
The sentence was handed down by the Special Terrorism Court, weeks after US President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, which human rights activists warned could prompt the kingdom to escalate its crackdown on regime opponents and other pro-democracy activists.
Salma al-Shahab, a 34-year-old mother of two small children, was initially sentenced to three years in prison for the “crime” of using a website to “incite public unrest and undermine civil and national security.” But an appeals court on Monday handed down the new sentence – 34 years in prison, plus a 34-year ban on leaving the country, after she is released from prison.
The new charges include the allegation that Shahab “aids and abets those who seek to cause public unrest and undermine civil and national security by monitoring their Twitter accounts” and through “retweets.”
The assessment is that the mother can still request an appeal. Shahab sometimes re-tweeted tweets by opponents of the Saudi regime living in exile, who called for the release of political prisoners in the kingdom. She appears to have supported the case of Lujain al-Khatloul, a prominent Saudi feminist activist who was previously jailed, allegedly tortured for advocating for women’s driving rights, and now lives under a travel ban outside of Saudi Arabia.
The Guardian reported that a woman whose father was sometimes kept in solitary confinement and asked during her trial to tell the judge privately something about the way she was treated, something she did not want to state to her father. She was not allowed to convey the message to the judge.