Saudi Arabia jails another woman for using Twitter

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Court records reviewed by a human rights organization show that a second Saudi Arabian woman, Nourah bint Saeed Al-Qahtani, has been sentenced to decades in jail for using social media to "violate the public order" by the country's terrorism court.

A specialized criminal court allegedly found Al-Qahtani guilty of "using the internet to tear [Saudi Arabia's] social fabric" and sentenced her to 45 years in prison as a result, according to documents obtained and examined by Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn).

Dawn informed the Guardian of its findings, which the latter said had been corroborated by Saudi sources, in hopes that the public would be able to shed light on Al-Qahtani's case.

Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf region at Dawn, said that Saudi authorities appear to have imprisoned Qahtani for “simply tweeting her opinions,” adding that “It is impossible not to connect the dots between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s meeting with [US] President Biden last month in Jeddah and the uptick in the repressive attacks against anyone who dares criticize the crown prince or the Saudi government for well-documented abuses.”

It doesn't seem like Qahtani had a Twitter account under her real name. Other Saudis who are thought to have posted satirical or critical information on Twitter behind aliases have also been detained and arrested according to The Guardian.

The laws of Saudi Arabia are made to give the government the most amount of discretion possible, including the ability to hold people in custody for violating broadly defined anti-terrorism laws like "disturbing public order" and "endangering national unity."

Earlier, Salma Al-Shehab, a 34-year-old mother of two, aged four and six, 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." 

However, on Monday, August 15, an appeals court handed down the new sentence, of 34 years in prison followed by a 34-year travel ban, after a public prosecutor requested that the court consider other alleged crimes.

Shehab was not a prominent or particularly vocal Saudi activist, neither in Saudi Arabia nor in the United Kingdom. 

On Instagram, where she had only 159 followers, she described herself as a dental hygienist, medical educator, Ph.D. student at Leeds University, lecturer at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, wife, and mother to her sons, Noah and Adam.

“MBS’s ruthless repression machine”

The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights condemned Shehab's sentence, which it said was the longest ever imposed on an activist. It was noted that many female activists had been subjected to unfair trials that resulted in arbitrary sentences, as well as "severe torture," including sexual harassment.

Khalid Aljabri, a Saudi living in exile whose sister and brother are detained in Saudi Arabia, said the Shehab case demonstrated Saudi Arabia's view that dissent equals terrorism.

“Salman’s draconian sentencing in a terrorism court over peaceful tweets is the latest manifestation of MBS’s ruthless repression machine,” he said.

“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 received little attention, the Washington Post published a sarcastic editorial about Saudi Arabia's treatment of the Leeds student on Tuesday, stressing that her case demonstrated that the "commitments" the US President 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.

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