Saudi urged to release 2 women detained for tweets

UN experts have urged the Saudi authorities to release two women who were imprisoned because of tweets they posted.

Salma Al-Shehab and Noura Al-Qahtani, who were sentenced to prison last year because of their tweets criticising the authorities, are being detained arbitrarily and therefore should be released, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a body of independent human rights experts linked to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a report last month.

It stressed that they should be granted “an enforceable right to damages and other compensation in accordance with international law.”

The report mentioned reliable evidence showing that Al-Shehab was subjected to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment during her arrest, noting that the violations against her included threats, insults, harassment and inappropriate methods used during her interrogation, such as exploiting her depression by interrogating her in the middle of the night after she took her antidepressants and sleeping pills.

The Saudi authorities rejected the conclusions of the team, confirming that the judicial process against the two women was fair and denying that Al-Shehab was not treated well.

Al-Shehab, who belongs to the Shia minority in the Kingdom, was pursuing her doctoral studies in the UK. She was arrested in January 2021 while on vacation in Saudi. She said that she spent 285 days in solitary confinement before she was convicted in March 2022 by a court specialising in “terrorism” cases.

The evidence used against her included posts in support of women’s rights and retweets of a Saudi activist known for defending women’s rights.

Last August, she was sentenced to 34 years in prison, and banned from travelling for a similar period after serving her sentence.

Al-Qahtani, who is a mother of two, was sentenced to 45 years in prison last year for using Twitter to “challenge” King Salman and his son, the crown prince.

Al-Qahtani’s Twitter account, mentioned in the case documents, included posts critical of the government and calls to protest against it.

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