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Casablanca – After a Saudi Arabian court condemned a Saudi PhD student at Leeds University to 34 years in jail for retweeting dissidents and spreading “false” rumors, the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has been urged to intervene in the case.
Since the imprisoned Saudi student, Salma al-Shehab had been living in Britain and was detained after returning to visit family last year, Hilary Benn, Labour MP for Leeds Central, has said that the UK had a “duty” to press for her release.
According to The Guardian, Benn wrote to Truss to urge her to “make representations to the Saudi authorities” for Shehab “so that she can be freed to return to her family and to her studies.”
The case is “completely at odds with Saudi Arabia’s claim to be improving human rights,” he argued in his letter, noting that all al-Shehab “has done is use her Twitter account to support women’s rights and greater freedom, and to call for the release of imprisoned activists in Saudi Arabia.”
Benn added, “I think we have a duty as citizens and countries to speak out wherever human rights are abused and denied in this way. The fact that she was a student in one of our universities adds to that obligation.”
Read also: Saudi Court Hands Women’s Right Activist ‘Longest’ Verdict for Tweets
Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old mother of two, was detained in January 2021 while on vacation in Saudi Arabia, just before returning to the United Kingdom, where she was a PhD student at the University of Leeds.
She was first sentenced to three years in jail for “causing public unrest” and “destabilizing civil and national security” after appearing to promote activists and dissidents on Twitter.
However, after a public prosecutor urged the court to further investigate the alleged offenses, an appeals court upgraded the sentence on August 15 to 34 years in jail, as well as a 34-year travel restriction.
According to the US non-profit Freedom Initiative, the prison term handed to al-Shehab is the longest known sentence for a women’s rights campaigner in Saudi Arabia.
After al-Shehab recalled being abused and harassed inside cells, Amnesty International called for her “immediate and unconditional release.”
