DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – A Saudi court has upheld a 20-year prison sentence imposed on a Saudi aid worker who criticized the government on Twitter, amid a rare public rebuke from the US amid tensions There was another sign. Biden administration and state.
The ruling, confirmed late Wednesday, also upheld a 20-year travel ban on Abdulrahman al-Sadhan following his release.
The case against him may have its roots in an elaborate move that began in Silicon Valley and sparked a US federal case against two Twitter employees accused of spying for Saudi Arabia. The men reportedly accessed user data from more than 6,000 Twitter accounts, including nearly three dozen usernames the state wanted to disclose.
Al-Sadhan’s family has said his identity was leaked to Saudi authorities as the man behind an anonymous Arabic Twitter account that garnered a large following and criticized the government. .
His case is the latest example of continued crackdown on those critical of the Saudi government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It also shows the extent to which the authorities have gone to silence them.
Nevertheless, the al-Sadhan case stands out because of the seriousness of the sentence and its possible ties to the FBI investigation and the federal case in California, with two men charged with spying on behalf of the state, while an alleged third Was working on Twitter with a friend.
Saudi appellate judges delivered their ruling on Tuesday. He upheld al-Sadhan’s original 20-year sentence, followed by an equally lengthy travel ban, meaning the 37-year-old would not be truly free until his seventies.
Saudi officials have not commented on the legal proceedings, including the recent decision. The court did not make the decision public.
Al-Sadhan’s sister Ariz, a dual Saudi-American citizen living in California, confirmed the decision to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
She says her younger brother was not an activist, but was well aware of the economic challenges faced by young Saudi men and women because of his profession as an aid worker. She says her brother disappeared in March 2018 after security forces in plain clothes barged into the Red Crescent office in Riyadh, where he was working. As of February 2020, the family did not hear from him for almost two years.
During that period, it reached al-Sadhan’s family that she was being held in a secret location and abused: assault, electric shock, sleeplessness, verbal and sexual assault.
Al-Sadhan was originally sentenced by Saudi Arabia’s anti-terrorism court in April this year.
US State Department spokesman Ned Price speaks at the State Department on March 31, 2021 in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Custer, Poole)
The US State Department, which does not often comment on the individual cases of Saudi human rights activists, said in a statement on Wednesday that it was disappointed that the original sentence was upheld, adding that “the peaceful exercise of universal rights will never Should not be a punishable offence.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price said: “We have monitored his case closely and are concerned by allegations that Mr. al-Sadhan was abused, that he has been unable to communicate with family members, And their guarantee of a fair trial has not been respected.” said.
Price said the US would continue to “enhance the role of human rights in our relationship with Saudi Arabia”. He also said the US would continue to “encourage legal reforms that promote respect for the human rights of all individuals”.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a Twitter post that she was “saddened by the brutal punishment” that was upheld, “especially given the allegations of custodial torture.”
“Saudi Arabia’s attack on freedom of expression and its patterns of human rights abuses must be condemned by all freedom-loving people,” Pelosi said.
US Vice President Joe Biden offers condolences to Prince Salman bin Abdel-Aziz on the death of his brother Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud at the Prince Sultan’s Palace on October 27, 2011 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo/Hasan Ammar, FILE)
Relations between the kingdom and the Biden administration have been rocky, despite early efforts by Saudi Arabia to release some key activists from prison and restore ties with Qatar ahead of the swearing-in of US President Joe Biden.
Still, one of Biden’s first orders as president was to end US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. He also ordered the publication of a US intelligence report implicating the Saudi crown prince in the murder of author and critic Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. Last month, the US withdrew missile defense from the kingdom in Yemen, despite facing scattered drone and missile attacks from the Iran-backed Houthis.
Also this week, activists said Salah Al-Haider, a dual US-Saudi citizen of Virginia, was sentenced to time off and banned from leaving the state for two years. His mother is prominent women’s rights activist Aziza al-Yousef, many of whom were widely arrested in 2018 and alleged that they were abused and assaulted while in custody.
Activists close to the family told the AP that he was indicted on charges such as showing sympathy to critics of the government, who were branded as terrorists, for joining a group on the messaging service Telegram, aimed at the alleged was to break national unity, communicate with Saudi dissidents. Whose aim is to use social media to destabilize the nation and promote ideologies that threaten national unity. He has denied the allegations, and insisted that any attempts were made to free him when his mother was taken into custody.
