A Saudi girl lately jailed for forty five years turned into sentenced for the use of Twitter to “mission” the country’s king and crown prince, in step with a courtroom docket record visible Tuesday via way of means of AFP.
The harsh sentence for Nourah al-Qahtani, which got here to mild ultimate week and drew speedy worldwide condemnation, turned into issued much less than a month after US President Joe Biden voiced situation approximately human rights abuses for the duration of a arguable go to to Saudi Arabia.
The sentencing record turned into furnished to AFP via way of means of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a Washington-primarily based totally rights organization based via way of means of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
AFP couldn’t independently affirm it, and Saudi government have now no longer answered to requests for touch upon the case.
The record describes Qahtani as a mom of 5 in her past due 40s who suffers from unspecified fitness issues.
She does now no longer have a big public profile and it isn’t always clean how her nameless Twitter account, which has fewer than six hundred followers, attracted the eye of Saudi government.
The courtroom docket located that Qahtani had used Twitter “to mission the faith and justice” of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s 37-yr-antique de facto ruler, in step with the record.
It additionally says she incited “the sports of people who are looking for to disturb public order and destabilise the safety of society and the steadiness of the kingdom” via way of means of “publishing fake and malicious tweets”.
Qahtani extensively utilized Twitter to “insult kingdom symbols and officials” and demand “the discharge of detainees pending protection cases”, the record says, with out offering similarly details.
Qahtani’s account, as diagnosed withinside the courtroom docket record, functions severa posts criticising the authorities, and its banner photograph consists of a hashtag calling for an anti-authorities protest coinciding with ultimate yr’s hajj pilgrimage.
The account additionally retweeted posts caution of tries to arrest the ones in the back of public protests, which aren’t tolerated in Saudi Arabia.
‘Part of a pattern’?
Its ultimate put up is dated July 2021, the identical month Qahtani turned into taken into custody.
A courtroom docket had to begin with sentenced her in February to 6 and a 1/2 of years in jail, observed via way of means of a journey ban for the identical quantity of time.
The prosecution then appealed for a harsher sentence, ensuing withinside the forty five-yr term.
Prince Mohammed has touted an enlargement of girls’s rights below his rule that noticed them being given the proper to drive, even as additionally overseeing a crackdown on girls activists.
Earlier in August, rights agencies publicised the case of Salma al-Shehab, a PhD candidate at Britain’s University of Leeds who turned into sentenced to 34 years in jail for helping dissidents searching for to “disrupt public order” via way of means of retweeting their posts.
Qahtani’s sentence “is now a part of a pattern”, stated Abdullah Alaoudh, DAWN’s director of studies for the Gulf region.
“Targeting everyday human beings is supposed to ship a shockwave of worry to the locals and Saudi public to chorus from even criticising the Saudi authorities thru nameless Twitter accounts.”
