He therefore led judges in Saudi Arabia to sentence a doctoral dentistry student to 34 years in prison on August 9. For what crime? Sharing messages for women’s rights on a Twitter account that has remained particularly confidential.
Salma Al-Chehab, 34 years old, mother of two children and member of a Shiite minority, had already been sentenced to a very heavy prison sentence of six years, three of which were suspended, in the first instance in 2021 and stigmatized. In the appeal process, the Saudi judiciary made this grotesque choice. An exit ban for a similar length of time was even added. This judiciary considered that the young woman, who was continuing her studies in the UK before her arrest during a visit to Saudi Arabia, “has provided assistance to those who seek to disrupt public order and spread false and malicious information “.
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Indeed, the judges behind this grotesque verdict broke all records for malice towards the kingdom. They justified the worst stereotypes, which the Saudi authorities are the first to complain about. With such officials, Saudi Arabia needs no critics. For the record, the most severe sentence handed down in 2018 at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul for the members of the commando responsible for the assassination and gruesome dismemberment of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was fourteen years shorter than the one met by Salma Al- Chehab…
MBS takes this decision into account
Since we do not want to accuse Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, that the principle of the separation of powers ties his hands, he is obviously responsible for this scandalous condemnation, which has even moved the United Nations. . That phrase, in turn, can only embarrass Western leaders involved in his recent rehabilitation after the Khashoggi affair. They are the President of the United States, Joe Biden, who met him in Jeddah in July, and Emmanuel Macron, who received him in Paris a little later. Even the most icy realpolitik should limit arbitrariness, especially when it claims to defend values such as justice and respect for human rights.
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We must hope that the Saudi authorities will soon come to their senses and that this sentence, which makes them ridiculous in the eyes of the whole world, will be overturned quickly. The reverse would testify to the worrying deafness of a prince whose rise to fame was marked both by particularly brutal subjugation of his kind in a monarchy where power had long been exercised in a collegiate body and by particularly risky decisions. like the devastating and futile war being waged in Yemen against the Houthi rebellion.
Before the assassination of the Saudi dissident, which was followed by a diplomatic quarantine, Mohammed Ben Salman had not reckoned his energy to install the story of a reforming prince determined to snap the kingdom out of immobility and forestall the end of oil revenues today the Saudi coffers swell. However, the strategic decision of making the kingdom more open to the world, particularly through tourism, is incompatible with the habits and customs of a satrap, exemplified by the unjust condemnation of Salma Al-Chehab.