The prolonged jail phrases handed down final yr to Salma al-Shehab and Nourah al-Qahtani, primarily over Twitter posts criticising the federal government, have heightened international scrutiny of repression beneath Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who’s attempting to rebrand the Gulf kingdom as open for business and tourism.
In a report dated June 19 and shared with AFP, the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, an impartial professional panel, decided the ladies had been held arbitrarily and that “the appropriate remedy would be to release” them.
They needs to be given “an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law”, it stated.
The UN consultants additionally stated there was credible proof Shehab had confronted “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” whereas in custody.
The alleged abuses in opposition to her embody “threats, insults, harassment and improper methods used during her interrogation”, resembling taking “advantage of (Shehab’s) depression by interrogating her in the middle of the night, shortly after she had taken her antidepressant and sleeping pills”.
Discover the tales of your curiosity
Sources for the report included 5 teams representing the 2 ladies, amongst them the rights organisation ALQST, Democracy for the Arab World Now and MENA Rights Group. In its response to the professional panel, Saudi Arabia rejected the findings as “unfounded” and stated they lacked “supporting evidence”.
The kingdom stated the judicial course of had been honest and denied Shehab had been mistreated.
Saudi officers didn’t reply to a request for remark from AFP on Saturday.
Shehab, a member of the Shiite minority within the majority Sunni kingdom, had been finding out for a doctorate in Britain when she was arrested in January 2021 whereas on vacation.
She has stated she was held for 285 days in solitary confinement earlier than being convicted in March 2022 by a courtroom that tries terrorism instances.
The proof in opposition to her included posts championing ladies’s rights and retweets of a distinguished Saudi ladies’s rights activist.
In August, she was sentenced to 34 years in jail and banned from travelling overseas for an additional 34 years.
Qahtani obtained a 45-year sentence final yr for utilizing Twitter to “challenge” Prince Mohammed and his father King Salman.
A courtroom doc seen final yr by AFP described an nameless account during which Qahtani criticised the federal government and retweeted posts warning of makes an attempt to arrest these behind public protests, which aren’t tolerated in Saudi Arabia.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com