A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a woman to 45 years in prison for using social media to “violate the public order.”
Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was convicted "likely within last week" by the Saudi Specialized Criminal Court on charges of "using the internet to tear the (Saudi) social fabric" and "violating public order by using social media", according to documents obtained by the Washington-based Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) organisation.
Qahtani's conviction has come just weeks after a British mother-of-two Salma al-Shehab was handed a 35-year sentence for following and retweeting dissidents and activists on Twitter.
Saudi authorities appear to have jailed al-Qahtani for “simply tweeting her opinions”, said Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf region at Dawn. But little is known about her age and the circumstances of her detention.
“It is impossible not to connect the dots between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s meeting with President Biden last month in Jeddah and the uptick in the repressive attacks against anyone who dares criticise the crown prince or the Saudi government for well-documented abuses,” Alaoudh said.
The de facto Saudi ruler, Prince Mohammed, has been cracking down on dissent and Shehab's sentence is the longest ever handed down to a Saudi Arabian women's rights defender.
According to the court document obtained by DAWN, the specialised Criminal Court issued the sentence against al-Qahtani in August, for "breaking the social fabric in the Kingdom" by criticizing Saudi rulers, and for "producing, and storing of materials impinging on public order and religious values."
On Monday, an alliance of more than 30 rights groups called on the international community to pressure Riyadh to release Shehab.
They said the horrific arrest contrasts with the authorities' rhetoric on human rights, including women’s rights and legal reforms, with "repressive laws being used to criminalise their peaceful expression and activism."
Both sentencings follow the recent visit of US President Joe Biden to Saudi Arabia, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron’s hosting of Saudi Crown Prince and de-facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman in Paris.
The rights group said: "Such high-level meetings, without firm preconditions being set, have only emboldened the kingdom’s leadership to commit further abuses, as many of us warned before Biden’s trip."
The Saudi authorities have also carried out 120 executions so far this year which is more than double the number for the whole of 2021.
Saudi officials say the kingdom does not have political prisoners. "We have prisoners in Saudi Arabia who have committed crimes and who were put to trial by our courts and were found guilty," the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, told Reuters last month.
