DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – U.N. human rights specialists on Friday referred to as for the discharge of two Saudi Arabian girls they are saying had been arbitrarily detained and denied primary rights after tweeting criticism of the dominion’s insurance policies.
Salma al-Shehab was sentenced to 34 years in jail and Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was sentenced to 45 years final summer season after they had been arrested in separate instances in 2021. They had been discovered responsible by a particular courtroom initially established to attempt terror suspects however which has broadened its mandate lately amid a heavy crackdown on dissent.
The kingdom’s human rights file has come underneath heightened scrutiny because it has made main inroads into worldwide sports, attracting a number of the world’s prime soccer stars and getting into right into a shock merger with golf’s PGA Tour.
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a panel of unbiased specialists tasked by the U.N. Human Rights Council with investigating doable violations, stated in its report that the 2 girls had been denied due course of.
The working group stated there have been “credible” allegations that al-Shehab was “subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” when she was held incommunicado for practically two weeks after her arrest. It stated the Specialized Criminal Court, by which each girls had been convicted, “cannot be considered an independent and impartial tribunal,” and that the federal government utilized imprecise and overly broad provisions of its anti-terrorism and cybercime legal guidelines.
“The arrests, treatment and lengthy sentences of Ms. al-Shehab and Ms. al-Qahtani indicate that they were discriminated against for their human rights activism and for sharing their views peacefully on social media,” it stated.
“The appropriate remedy would be to release (them) immediately and accord them an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations.” The Saudi Ministry of Media, Ministry of Culture and Information, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t reply to requests for remark.
The 17-page U.N. report included a response from the Saudi authorities by which it stated the allegations of rights abuses had been unfounded and questioned the supply of the knowledge, saying the report had failed to supply supporting proof. It additionally insisted the judiciary was unbiased.
Inès Osman, director of the Geneva-based MENA Rights Group, stated hers was amongst 5 human rights organizations that contributed to the report. She stated the lengthy sentences “are there to set an example.”
“It’s sending a message that here is what happens if you speak out, and if you think that you’re just going to use Twitter to share your thoughts, that’s not going to happen,” she stated.
Lina Alhathloul, the pinnacle of monitoring at ALQST, a London-based rights group centered on Saudi Arabia, welcomed the U.N.’s function in publicizing the arrests. “It makes the government realize that however they try to cover up violations, however they try to cover up the arbitrary arrests, it will be known,” she stated.
Alhathloul’s sister, Loujain, is a outstanding girls’s rights activist who had led a marketing campaign calling for lifting a longstanding ban on girls driving. Saudi Arabia lifted the driving ban in 2018, a part of a raft of social reforms which have reworked each day life within the nation. But that 12 months authorities additionally arrested Loujain and different activists, jailing her for 3 years and imposing a journey ban that’s nonetheless in impact.
“No one can be part of the change, no one can really criticize anything. You’re building a society in which people are muzzled, where people are blind, where people are always scared,” Alhathoul stated.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the dominion’s day-to-day ruler and the driving power behind the reforms, has additionally presided over a heavy crackdown on dissent. U.S. intelligence discovered that he possible accepted the 2018 killing of outstanding Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, allegations the crown prince denies.
The two girls detained in 2021 had been personal residents who tweeted of their spare time.
Al-Shehab, a mom of two and a researcher at Leeds University in Britain, was detained throughout a household trip in January 2021. Osman stated she was held in solitary confinement for over 285 days.
The Specialized Criminal Court sentenced her to 34 years in jail adopted by a journey ban of the identical size for “giving a wider platform for terrorist messaging by spreading ‘false information’ that threatens national security and public order,” in accordance with courtroom paperwork seen by The Associated Press.
Al-Qahtani was arrested in July 2021 for allegedly calling for the discharge of political detainees and criticizing human rights abuses on nameless social media accounts. The SCC sentenced her to 45 years in jail for “preparing, sending and storing information, through the Internet, seeking to harm public order,” in accordance with courtroom paperwork.
Rights teams say that the secrecy round such trials, and folks’s worry of talking out, makes it tough to doc the extent of the crackdown.
“Those cases are only the tip of the iceberg,” Osman. “There are many more in similar situations and cases we don’t know of.”
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