A Saudi student at Leeds University who returned to the Kingdom for a holiday has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for following and retweeting dissident activists on her Twitter account. MailOnline has more.
Salma al-Shebab, 34, was accused of using Twitter to “cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security” after she posted tweets calling for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Shebab, who has two young sons aged four and six, was initially sentenced to six years in prison but a Saudi terrorism court on Monday increased her jail-term to 34 years after the activist appealed her sentence.
The mother-of-two will also face a 34-year travel ban after serving her sentence.
In sentencing, the court cited Al-Shebab’s social media activity where she tweeted in support of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and expressed solidarity with imprisoned women’s rights activists such as Loujain al-Hathloul and called for their release.
Al-Shebab was arrested after she retweeted a post from Al-Hathloul’s sister Lina which read: “Freedom for Loujain Al-Hathloul… Freedom for all prisoners of conscience. Your freedom is my first wish for this New Year – Happy New Year.”
Al-Shebab would also sometimes retweet posts from dissident activists who were living in exile.
She was accused of “providing succour to those seeking to disrupt public order and undermine the safety of the general public and stability of the state, and publishing false and tendentious rumours on Twitter”.
Al-Shebab was arrested in January 2021 while on holiday in Saudi Arabia just days before she planned to return to the U.K., where she was a PhD student at the University of Leeds.
Al-Shehab’s religious identity as a Shi’a Muslim, who is believed to have been a factor in her arrest and sentencing.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Salma al-Shebab was reported to the Saudi authorities by someone using a snitching app called called Kollona Amn, which translates as “All Are Safe”. A good example of how state authorities are invoking public safety to justify censorship. The Guardian has more.
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Are Saudis still the good guys to do business with after Russia is sanctioned? confused
With “allies” like those, who needs enemies?
Saudis be like: ‘what is the west going to do, ban our oil after it already banned Russian supply? Let’s just sentence this woman to million years in jail’
I don’t understand why anyone wants anything to do with the place.
I don’t even know why any Westerner would want to holiday or live in Dubai. It’s bad enough being exposed to the stark contrast in cultures at Dubai Airport!
Seeing women in black with not even their eyes or hands exposed being towed along by their keepers on an invisible leash doesn’t exactly make me all warm and fuzzy towards such places or the culture.
Saudi is just next level misogyny in my opinion.
Indeed
Neither do I. I visited Bahrain, UAE, Qatar and Saudi often in the 1990s. Why we want anything to do with these people is beyond me. Oh yes, oil and gas. The sooner we can wean ourselves off THEIR oil and gas the better.
At this rate Saudi will become just as bad as the UK and USA.
I feel very sorry for this young woman but having got out of Saudia she should have stayed out. This is the medieval society which will be our future unless we stop the damned Reset.
Indeed, that is where the Great Reset will ultimately lead. Which interestingly makes them rather strange bedfellows with the neoreactionary nutters as well.
It is euphemistically called “archaeofuturism”. The worst of medievalism and technocracy rolled into one, basically.
Behold, our “ally” from hell, Saudi Arabia.
Recently, some woman from Germany twittered about the German idiom Schwein gehabt haben (literally to have had a pig, meaning is You were really lucky here). According to her opinion, this saying ought to be outlawed because would clearly be a microaggression targetting muslims who were a progressive force in society.
It’s nice to experience this progressive force in action.
If that’s what they consider “progressive”, I’d really hate to see what they consider regressive!
I generally take the view that regardless of what we think, the laws of the land are the laws of the land. If you take them on then you know you risk a substantial penalty. I’m no fan of Saudi, but at a time when our freedoms are being taken away, I feel that we should put our efforts here. We should sort out the authoritarian mess in our borders and on our doorstep before lecturing others on how to live.
34 years old and a student??
Why on earth would you go back to Saudi for a holiday?
Looking forward to hearing the hypocritical “guardians of free speech” in our Parliament condemning the silencing of dissent by Saudi officials.
There’s nothing quite like a bit of Parliamentary Hypocrisy to start the day …..