Shehab had been lively on the social media platform throughout campaigns demanding the abolition of the nation’s guardianship system, which provides males authorized management over sure facets of feminine relations’ lives. She had known as for the liberating of Saudi prisoners of conscience.
According to court docket information obtained by The Washington Post, Shehab was accused of utilizing a social media web site “to disrupt public order, undermine the security of society and stability of the state, and support those who had committed criminal actions according to the counterterrorism law and its financing.”
The paperwork stated she supported such people “by following their social media accounts and rebroadcasting their tweets,” and that she unfold false rumors. The paperwork went on to say that after she appealed an preliminary conviction, it was determined that her jail sentence was too quick, “considering her crimes,” and that her earlier sentence failed to “achieve restraint and deterrence.”
On high of a 34-year sentence and subsequent 34-year journey ban, which begins after the jail sentence ends, the court docket dominated that her cell phone be confiscated, and her Twitter account be “closed down permanently.”
The fees are acquainted: Sowing sedition and destabilizing the state are accusations continuously used towards activists within the kingdom who converse up towards the established order. Saudi Arabia has lengthy wielded its counterterrorism regulation towards its residents whose protests are deemed unacceptable, particularly in the event that they criticize the de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In late 2021, the preliminary ruling towards Shehab gave her six years in jail. When she appealed, nonetheless, it was elevated to 34 — the nation’s longest sentence towards a peaceable activist, in accordance to a number of human rights teams.
Rights teams have repeatedly warned in regards to the authorities’s current use of the counterterrorism regulation. In April, Human Rights Watch stated legal guidelines comparable to “the notoriously abusive counterterrorism law and the anti-cybercrime law, include vague and overly broad provisions that have been widely interpreted and abused.” The rulings are additionally usually characterised by inconsistent and harsh sentences.
As the sentence contains the closure of her Twitter account, at the very least one rights group is attempting to ensure that it isn’t shut down, stated Lina al-Hathloul, the pinnacle of monitoring and communications at ALQST, a London-based Saudi rights group.
“Now we’re working with Twitter not to close it or to make them aware that at least if they’re asked to close it, it comes from the Saudi government and not from her,” she stated. Twitter didn’t reply to a request for remark from The Post.
In its assertion Tuesday, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, which tracks arrests within the kingdom, stated the choice to sentence Shehab beneath the counterterrorism regulation “confirms that Saudi Arabia deals with those who demand reforms and critics on social networks as terrorists.”
The group stated the ruling units a harmful precedent and exhibits that Saudi Arabia’s broadly lauded efforts to modernize the dominion and enhance girls’s rights “are not serious and fall within the whitewashing campaigns it is carrying out to improve its human rights record.”
Before her arrest, Shehab was a lecturer at Princess Nourah University within the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and a PhD pupil at Britain’s University of Leeds. She was conducting exploratory analysis there about new methods in oral and dental medication and their functions in Saudi Arabia, a colleague who labored along with her in Leeds stated.
The particular person, who spoke on the situation anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case, described Shehab as a “wonderful” and “generous” colleague — “the type of person who always brings in treats.”
She by no means publicly spoke of politics, the colleague added, as an alternative talking usually of her kids and displaying associates and colleagues images of them. She “missed her family a lot.”
Shehab went again to Saudi Arabia on the finish of 2019 and by no means returned to faculty in Britain. At first, that didn’t alarm anybody, given the lengthy interval of coronavirus lockdowns that started in March 2020 in England. But ultimately, her colleague stated, individuals started asking, “Has anyone heard from Salma?”
“It came as a shock to all of us because we thought, ‘How can a person like her be arrested?’ ” the particular person stated. The University of Leeds didn’t reply to a request for remark from The Post.
When requested whether or not it was monitoring Shehab’s case or was concerned in any makes an attempt to safe her launch, the British Foreign Office informed The Post by way of e-mail that “ministers and senior officials have repeatedly raised concerns over the detention of Women’s Rights Defenders with the Saudi authorities and will continue to do so.”
Shehab belongs to the minority Shiite sect of Islam — seen by many hard-line Sunni Muslims as heretical and whose adherents in Saudi Arabia are sometimes robotically seen with suspicion by the Sunni authorities.
Saudi Arabia usually has been criticized for its remedy of the Shiite minority. Earlier this 12 months, New York-based Human Rights Watch stated in its annual report on human rights that the dominion “systematically discriminates against Muslim religious minorities,” together with Shiites.
Shehab’s final Twitter exercise was on Jan. 13, 2021, two days earlier than her arrest, when she retweeted a traditional Arabic track about lacking a cherished one’s firm.
On her Twitter web page, which stays lively, she has a pinned tweet of a prayer asking for forgiveness if she had ever transgressed towards one other human unknowingly and asking God to assist her reject injustice and assist those that face it.
The tweet ends with “freedom to the prisoners of conscience and to every oppressed person in the world.”
Timsit reported from France.
