A woman in a Ryad supermarket – Portal
The Saudi monarchy’s tightening against women, who also indirectly support dissent on social media, is intensifying: 45 years in prison is the latest shocking sentence being handed down Nurah al-Qahtani touched a few weeks later, at 34, for some posts unwelcome to the regime Salma al-Shehab, mother of two, for simply retweeting messages from some dissidents. Both verdicts were pronounced on appeal.
“Just weeks after Salma al-Shehab’s shocking 34-year sentence earlier this month, Nourah al-Qahtani’s 45-year sentence shows how legitimate the Saudi authorities feel to punish even the mildest criticism of their citizens,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, a member of the human rights organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), founded by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who himself was killed and dismembered at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul for his anti-regime positions.
Not much is known about Nourah al-Qahtani, and there doesn’t even seem to be an active Twitter account at the moment. She received the severe sentence on appeal after being found guilty of “using the internet to destroy the social fabric of the country” — according to the court document released by Dawn — and of “violating the Public Order” via social media, the UK Counter-Terrorism and Cybercrime Act.
The other convicted woman, Salma al-Shehab, was sentenced to 34 years in prison for opening a Twitter profile and retweeting messages from dissidents and activists. Salma was doing her PhD at the University of Leeds in the UK and was arrested while on holiday in her country. The woman was initially sentenced to three years in prison for the “crime” of using a website aimed at “causing public disorder and destabilizing civil and national security”, before an appeals court handed down the new sentence of 34 years in prison and the same issued a series of travel bans after the prosecutor asked the court to consider other alleged crimes.
US President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia in July, aimed at reshaping relations and balances in the Gulf, also in the face of the Ukraine crisis and energy emergency, was seen by Saudi activists as encouragement to crack down on to aggravate dissidents and other pro-democracy activists; and recent convictions seem to prove them right, although Riyadh and Washington have given different versions of some of the statements made during the visit.