A Saudi doctoral student at Leeds University in Britain, who was sentenced to 34 years in prison over her Twitter activity, has been released after her sentence was drastically reduced, a rights group announced on Monday.
Salma al-Shehab, a mother of two, had been imprisoned as part of a broader crackdown on dissent in the kingdom under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The London-based Saudi rights group ALQST confirmed her release and called for her full freedom, including the right to travel to the United Kingdom to complete her studies.
In January, ALQST and other rights organizations reported that al-Shehab’s sentence had been reduced to four years in prison, with an additional four years suspended. Amnesty International also confirmed her release.
"She spent almost 300 days in prolonged solitary confinement, was denied legal representation, and was then repeatedly convicted on terrorism charges and handed a decades-long sentence," said Dana Ahmed, a Middle East researcher at Amnesty International.
Al-Shehab was initially detained on January 15, 2021, during a family vacation in Saudi Arabia, just days before she was scheduled to return to Britain. According to an official charge sheet, she was accused of disturbing public order and destabilizing the social fabric due to her social media activity. Authorities alleged that she followed and retweeted dissident accounts and spread false rumors on Twitter, now known as X.
Both the Washington-based Middle East Democracy Center and Freedom House welcomed her release.
"Al-Shehab's unjust and arbitrary punishment is emblematic of a fundamentally broken Saudi justice system, where trials are not fair, defendants have alarmingly few rights, and allegations of torture and abuse by police and prison officials are commonplace," said Brian Tronic of Freedom House.
Saudi officials have not acknowledged her release and did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
Al-Shehab belongs to Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Muslim minority, which has long complained of systemic discrimination in the Sunni-ruled kingdom. Her trial took place in a special court originally established to try terror suspects but which has since broadened its mandate to include cases linked to political dissent.
Prince Mohammed’s leadership has seen significant social reforms, including the lifting of the ban on women driving in 2018. However, his tenure has also been marked by a harsh crackdown on dissent. U.S. intelligence found that he likely approved the 2018 killing of prominent Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a claim the crown prince denies.
Other women have also been caught in the crackdown. Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, for example, was sentenced to 45 years in prison for her social media activity. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has classified both al-Qahtani and al-Shehab’s detentions as arbitrary.