Leeds student jailed for 34 years after tweeting about Saudi Arabia

Salma al-Shehab tweeted calls to launch political prisoners (Image: Democracy Now)

A Leeds College scholar who returned house to Saudi Arabia on vacation has been jailed for 34 years over her Twitter exercise.

Salma al-Shehab, 34, a Saudi citizen with two children, was detained in early 2021 and later hauled earlier than a terrorism tribunal.

Ms al-Shehab had not too long ago lively on the social media community, typically posting about political prisoners within the Gulf state.

She retweeted quite a few feedback calling for the discharge of activists similar to Loujain al-Hathloul, who was imprisoned on the time for defying the nation’s ban on girls driving though it had been lifted three years earlier.

In one other put up, she wrote: ‘Freedom for the prisoners of patriarchal programs and disgrace and shame for the jailer!’

Ms al-Shehab, a specialist in dentistry who was learning for a PhD in Leeds, sometimes tweeted help in favour of delicate reforms similar to ‘investing within the digital revolution’.

She in any other case shared household images, songs and quotes from literature.

The sentence, stated to be the longest ever handed to any activist within the nation’s trendy historical past, adopted her conviction for ”undermining the safety of society and the steadiness of the state’.

Salma’s six-year sentence has been elevated six-fold after a court docket enchantment (Image: ESOHR)

She was additionally discovered responsible of ‘offering assist to those that search to disrupt public order’ and ‘spreading false rumours’, in keeping with human rights teams.

She was initially sentenced to 6 years’ jail late final yr however the Saudi Court docket of Attraction overturned the sentence final week and raised her sentence almost six-fold.

The 34-year-old’s Twitter exercise suggests she had been reported by a stranger on a crime-reporting app that Saudi customers of Apple and Android smartphones can obtain.

The app, known as Kollona Amn, or ‘We Are All Safety’, boasts of enabling residents ‘to play the function of a police officer’ and is marketed by the Saudi authorities.

Apart from her twitter exercise, Ms al-Shehab had additionally been ‘lively throughout campaigns demanding the lifting of the guardianship system over girls by their male relations’, the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) stated.

The dentistry professional had beforehand campaigned in opposition to male guardianship (Image: Al Thaqafia TV)

The group stated her sentence is ‘unprecedented and harmful, as it's the longest jail sentence issued in opposition to feminine or male activists and may be a step in direction of additional escalation in opposition to them.’

It added: ‘In recent times, many ladies activists have been subjected to unfair trials which have led to arbitrary sentences, along with a few of them being subjected to extreme torture, together with sexual harassment.

‘In recent times, the Saudi authorities has arrested a minimum of 116 girls, 60 of whom are nonetheless detained, and ESOHR monitored the demise of 1 lady in jail.

‘Below the coverage of impunity, nobody has been held accountable for the abuses girls have been subjected to in prisons, regardless of the submitting of a number of complaints of torture and ill-treatment.’

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