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A Saudi Arabian court sentenced the well-known activist and women’s rights activist Ludschain al-Hathlul to five years and eight months in prison, according to her supporters.
Half – the two years and 10 months that Al-Hathlul has already spent in prison – has been commuted to suspended sentence, his family said Monday. This could allow the 31-year-old to be released in February or March. A five-year travel ban was also imposed.
Torture complaints
Al-Hathlul wanted to “implement a foreign agenda within the kingdom with the Internet” and disrupt public order, according to a report by the news site Sabq in the sentence announced Monday. They wanted to overthrow the system of government of the authoritarian state.
Al-Hathlul was sentenced by a special court for terrorism offenses after a criminal court referred the case there. The sentence can be contested for 30 days.
According to the judge, Al-Hathlul confessed to the crimes. He made his confessions voluntarily and without external coercion. His family, however, had stated that Ludschain had been tortured, among other things, by simulating drowning (“waterboarding”), whipping and electric shocks.
Campaign against driving bans
Al-Hathlul went on two hunger strikes to protest the conditions of his detention. The court rejected the torture accusations last week.
The UN human rights office spoke of a “deeply disturbing” verdict. Al-Hathlul had been arbitrarily detained for two and a half years. The office supported an early release as part of the suspended sentence as an “urgent matter,” the Geneva-based office wrote on Twitter.
Al-Hathlul is one of the most internationally known activists in the strictly Islamic monarchy of Saudi Arabia and was best known for his campaign to end the driving ban for women. She was arrested in May 2018, just before the driving ban was lifted. The prosecutor had demanded the maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
