Saudi Appeals Court this month, increased prison sentence of a Saudi doctoral student from 6 years to 34 years based solely on her Twitter activity, Human Rights Watch said
ACCORDING to the rights advocacy group, the sentence is believed to be the longest imposed on a Saudi woman for her peaceful online expression.
In late 2021, the Special Criminal Court, the country’s counter terrorism tribunal, sentenced Salma al-Shehab to six years in prison for her tweets.
She appealed the sentence contending that she did not know that her Twitter activity amounted to a crime and that her following base of about 2,000 was too small to “disrupt the order and fabric of society”
On 9 August, the Appeals Court ruled, instead, to increase her sentence, finding that the original sentence failed to achieve “restraint and deterrence”.
“Even for Saudi Arabia, the 34-year sentence imposed on al-Shehab for peaceful expression is preposterous,” said Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch.
“Saudi authorities clearly feel empowered to crush any dissent and Saudi women in particular. The US, France, and other governments that have diplomatically embraced the kingdom should promptly and publicly condemn this ruling.”
Court documents reviewed by Human Rights Watch indicate that al-Shehab was sentenced under Saudi’s counter-terrorism law to eight years in prison for “supporting those who incite terrorism,” 10 years for “providing support to those who seek to disrupt the public order, undermine the security of the society, and the stability of the state by following and retweeting,” five years for “creating an online account to commit any of the acts outlawed by the counter terrorism law,” and five years for “broadcasting false and malicious rumours.”
The court sentenced her to another year in prison under the anti-cybercrime law for “creating an online presence that disrupts public order.”
The presiding judge also added a discretionary five-year sentence. In addition to the combined 34-year-sentence, the court issued a subsequent travel ban for 34 years that would begin after her prison term, and an order to confiscate her devices and close her Twitter account.
The authorities detained al-Shehab in January last year, while she was visiting Saudi Arabia and a few days prior to her planned return to the UK, where she was a PhD candidate in her final year at the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds studying new techniques in oral and dental medicine. Al-Shehab has two children, 6 and 4 years old.
The Appeals Court did not clarify which tweets prompted al-Shehab’s arrest.
Human Rights Watch reviewed al-Shehab’s Twitter account and found that most tweets over the past four years related to her family and women’s rights issues in Saudi Arabia, none of which advocated or endorsed violence.
Human Rights Watch says, the Saudi government is notorious for repressing public dissent and has a well-established record of attempting to infiltrate technology platforms and use advanced cyber surveillance technology to spy on dissidents.
Human Rights Watch says that it has long documented the Saudi government’s flagrant abuse of the vague provisions in its counter-terrorism law and anti-cybercrime law to silence dissent.
The broad definition of terrorism allows for targeting peaceful criticism. Human Rights Watch said the counter-terrorism law undermines due process and fair trial rights because it grants the agencies of the Public Prosecution and the Presidency of State Security the authority to arrest and detain people, monitor their communications and financial data, search their property, and seize assets without judicial oversight.
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