Saudi woman jailed 34 years for using Twitter

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a young woman to 34 years in prison for using Twitter. Her name is Salma Al-Shehab. She studied at Leeds University, UK. She was sentenced to prison for following and retweeting the tweets of dissidents and rights activists.

It is known that 34 year old Salma is a mother of two children. Recently she went on holiday from UK to Saudi Arabia.

She was initially sentenced to three years in prison for the 'offense' of 'creating unrest among people and causing disruption of civil and national order' by using an internet website. But last Monday, an appeal court sentenced her to 34 years in prison. She was also banned from traveling for another 34 years after serving her sentence.

The sentence was commuted when prosecutors filed new criminal charges against the woman in court. The new charges include facilitating civil unrest and disrupting national security by following Twitter accounts. However, it is believed that Sehab will still get the opportunity to appeal in this case.

Convicted Salma Al-Sehab herself is not a vocal activist inside or outside of Saudi Arabia. She has 159 followers on Instagram. In her description she wrote, a dental hygienist, medical educator, PhD student at Leeds University and mother of two. Her number of followers on Twitter is only 2 thousand 597. Most of the times, she has published pictures of her children on Twitter. Sometimes she shared tweets of exiled Saudi activists asking for the release of royal prisoners.

Exiled Saudi activist Khalid Aljabari said the case of Salma Al-Sehab proves that Saudi Arabia treats dissidents as terrorists. Referring to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, he said, "Salma's harsh sentence in a terrorism court for a peaceful tweet is the latest manifestation of MBS's ruthless repression apparatus".