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Loujain al-Hathloul, the Saudi women’s rights activist detained three years ago by the Saudi government, has been sentenced to five years and eight months in prison after being found guilty of spying with foreign parties and conspiring against the kingdom.
But the court suspended his sentence for two years and 10 months, and delayed the start of his sentence to May 2018, which means he only has three months left to serve.
Although human rights activists will say that she should never have been detained for so long without charge, the prospect of serving just three more months in jail will help defuse an early potentially damaging confrontation with the Biden administration that would have occurred had she been locked up. . for another 20 years, as seemed possible at one point.
Saudi courts had already cleared the kingdom’s prosecutors of torturing her while she was in detention, saying there was no evidence that she was transferred from Jeddah governorate to a secret location where she was tortured and sexually harassed.
News of her verdict was first tweeted by the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, which said a Saudi court had “sentenced a detainee by inciting her to change the kingdom’s ruling regime and cooperating with individuals and entities to carry out an agenda foreign “.
She had been arrested in May 2018 along with four other human rights activists. He claims that he was not allowed to speak to anyone for seven weeks after his arrest.
The Saudi kingdom has repeatedly denied that she was arrested for campaigning for women’s right to drive, a right granted to her in 2018, but instead for mounting a campaign to undermine the royal family. The case underscores how little political dissent is allowed within the kingdom.
The original charge sheet included meeting British diplomats and other European diplomats, as well as applying for a job at the United Nations and using his arrest on his CV. She was also accused of speaking to foreign press agencies and international human rights groups.
Other charges included joining a group on the messaging app Telegram, where he discussed human rights and a new constitution, contacted human rights defender Khaled al-Omair, and received daily expenses of € 50 from foreign organizations when he attended. to international conferences to talk about women. in Saudi Arabia.
Other alleged crimes involve tweets about her trip from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia and documents found on her laptop, including a pdf file of the UN convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. She was also accused of communicating with European embassies about her case at the time when the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, was due to visit those countries.
After more than two years in detention and an internal debate within the kingdom about how to handle their case, the Saudis waited until after the G20 summit in November to transfer their case to the specialized criminal court.
Amnesty International was one of many groups that contrasted the Saudi claim to empower women with its imprisonment and torture of peaceful activists.
At the last minute, on December 10, the Saudis dropped charges that included that she had been in contact with the British, EU and Dutch embassies, possibly because all three are considered friendly powers and her involvement in the case could generate higher levels of protest.
Hathloul’s sister Lina wrote in a tweet that while the ruling meant her sister could be released in March 2021, she was also subject to a five-year travel ban. He said that both his sister and the prosecutor could appeal.
Hathloul’s suspension of prison term is also dependent on him not repeating any of the crimes for the next three years, a condition that would block his freedom of expression, assuming he must remain in Saudi Arabia.
His family attended the hearing. State-owned Saudi newspapers claimed that she had admitted the crimes.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, described the sentence as shameful and said that Hathloul had “demanded his rights rather than waiting for the Saudi crown prince to grant them at his own majestic pace as a matter of royal prerogative.”
Alaa Al-Siddiq, executive director of ALQST, the Saudi human rights group, said: “The fact that she was convicted under the anti-terrorism law, based on charges related solely to her peaceful activism, is the latest parody of the justice in a trial that has been flawed from start to finish and lacked reliable judicial evidence. “
Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, said she found the ruling disturbing, adding that defending human rights is not terrorism.
Human rights group Grant Liberty said: “Loujain is a peaceful activist for basic freedoms that the rest of the world takes for granted. In response, she has been jailed, tortured and abused by the Saudi authorities, but they call her a terrorist. “
