“A Saudi student at Leeds University who had returned home to the kingdom for a holiday has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account and for following and retweeting dissidents and activists.
The sentencing by
Saudi’s special terrorist court was handed down weeks after the US
president Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, which human rights activists
had warned could embolden the kingdom to escalate its crackdown on
dissidents and other pro-democracy activists.”
Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Saudi Woman Given
34-Year Prison Sentence for Using Twitter
August
17, 2022
Stephanie
Kirchgaessner
August
16, 2022
The
Guardian
A Saudi student at
Leeds University who had returned home to the kingdom for a holiday has been
sentenced to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account and for
following and retweeting dissidents and activists.
The sentencing by
Saudi’s special terrorist court was handed down weeks after the US
president Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, which human rights activists
had warned could embolden the kingdom to escalate its crackdown on
dissidents and other pro-democracy activists.
The case also
marks the latest example of how the crown prince Mohammed bin
Salman has targeted Twitter users in his campaign of repression, while
simultaneously controlling a major indirect stake in the US social media
company through Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund
(PIF).
Salma al-Shehab,
34, a mother of two young children, was initially sentenced to three years in
prison for the “crime” of using an internet website to “cause public unrest and
destabilize civil and national security”. But an appeals court on Monday handed
down the new sentence – 34 years in prison followed by a 34-year travel ban –
after a public prosecutor asked the court to consider other alleged crimes.
According to a
translation of the court records, which were seen by the Guardian, the new
charges include the allegation that Shehab was “assisting those who seek to
cause public unrest and destabilize civil and national security by following
their Twitter accounts” and by re-tweeting their tweets. It is believed that Shehab
may still be able to seek a new appeal in the case.
Salma al-Shehab
and her family. Photograph: ESOHR
By all accounts,
Shehab was not a leading or especially vocal Saudi activist, either inside the
kingdom or in the UK. She described herself on Instagram – where she
had 159 followers – as a dental hygienist, medical educator, PhD student at
Leeds University and lecturer at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University,
and as a wife and a mother to her sons, Noah and Adam.
Her Twitter
profile showed she had 2,597 followers. Among tweets about Covid burnout and
pictures of her young children, Shehab sometimes retweeted tweets by Saudi
dissidents living in exile, which called for the release of political prisoners
in the kingdom. She seemed to support the case of Loujain al-Hathloul, a
prominent Saudi feminist activist who was previously imprisoned, is alleged to
have been tortured for supporting driving rights for women, and is now
living under a travel ban.
One person who
knew Shehab said she could not stomach injustice. She was described as
well-educated and an avid reader who had arrived in the UK in 2018 or 2019 to
pursue her PhD at Leeds. She had returned home to Saudi Arabia in
December 2020 on a holiday and had intended to bring her two children and
husband back to the UK with her. She was then called in for questioning by
Saudi authorities and eventually arrested and tried for her tweets.
A person who
followed her case said Shehab had at times been held in solitary confinement
and had sought during her trial to privately tell the judge something about how
she had been handled, which she did not want to state in front of her father.
She was not permitted to communicate the message to the judge, the person said.
The appeals verdict was signed by three judges but the signatures were
illegible.
Twitter declined
to comment on the case and did not respond to specific questions about what –
if any – influence Saudi Arabia has over the company. Twitter previously did
not respond to questions by the Guardian about why a senior aide to Prince
Mohammed, Bader al-Asaker, has been allowed to keep a verified Twitter account
with more than 2 million followers, despite US government allegations that he
orchestrated an illegal infiltration of the company which led anonymous Twitter
users to be identified and jailed by the Saudi government. One former
Twitter employee has been convicted by a US court in connection to the
case.
One of Twitter’s
biggest investors is the Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns
more than 5% of Twitter through his investment company, Kingdom Holdings. While
Prince Alwaleed still serves as chairman of the company, his control over the
group faced questions in the US media, including the Wall Street Journal, after
it emerged that the Saudi royal – a cousin of the crown prince – had been held
captive at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh for 83 days. The incident was part
of a broader purge led by Prince Mohammed against other members of the royal
family and businessmen, and involved allegations of torture, coercion and
expropriation of billions in assets into Saudi coffers.
In a
2018 Bloomberg interview of Prince Alwaleed, which was conducted in Riyadh
seven weeks after his release, the billionaire acknowledged he had reached a
“confirmed understanding” with the Saudi government, apparently in connection
to his release, which was confidential.
More
recently, Kingdom Holding announced in May that it had sold about 17% of
its company to the PIF, where Prince Mohammed serves as chairman, for $1.5bn.
That, in turn, makes the Saudi government a significant indirect investor in
Twitter. According to Twitter, investors do not play a role in managing the
company’s day-to-day business.
The European Saudi
Organization for Human Rights condemned Shehab’s sentence, which it said was
the longest prison sentence to ever be brought against any activist. It noted
that many female activists have been subjected to unfair trials that have led
to arbitrary sentences and have been subjected to “severe torture”, including
sexual harassment.
Khalid Aljabri, a
Saudi who is living in exile and whose sister and brother are being held in the
kingdom, said the Shehab case proved Saudi Arabia’s view that dissent equates
to terrorism.
“Salma’s draconian
sentencing in a terrorism court over peaceful tweets is the latest
manifestation of MBS’s ruthless repression machine,” he said, referring to the
crown prince. “Just like [journalist Jamal] Khashoggi’s assassination, her
sentencing is intended to send shock waves inside and outside the kingdom – dare
to criticize MBS and you will end up dismembered or in Saudi dungeons.”
While the case has
not received widespread attention, the Washington Post on
Tuesday published a scathing editorial about Saudi Arabia’s treatment
of the Leeds student and said her case showed that “commitments” the president
had received on reforms were “a farce”.
“At the very
least, Mr. Biden must now speak out forcefully and demand that Ms. Shehab be
released and allowed to return to her sons, 4 and 6 years old, in the United
Kingdom, and to resume her studies there,” it read.
Stephanie
Kirchgaessner is the Guardian's US investigations correspondent, based in
Washington DC. Twitter @skirchy. Email: stephanie.kirchgaessner@theguardian.com.
Click here for Stephanie Kirchgaessner's public key
Additional
reporting by Robyn Vinter in Leeds
Source URL: https://portside.org/2022-08-17/saudi-woman-given-34-year-prison-sentence-using-twitter
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to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at]
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has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
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