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A Saudi court has sentenced a student at the University of Leeds to 34 years in prison for retweeting dissidents and spreading "false" rumours, according to rights groups.
Saudi citizen Salma Al-Shehab, 34, and a mother of two children, was arrested during a visit to the Kingdom in 2020 due to messages she posted on her Twitter account.
ALQST, a Saudi human rights organization, and the Freedom Initiative, an American human rights organization, said a court this month sentenced her to 34 years in prison, including the time she spent. After that, she faces a 34-year travel ban. The ruling, seen as unusually harsh, comes amid a crackdown on dissidents and critics that has drawn condemnation from Western countries.
The once ultra-conservative kingdom is undergoing a transformation, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman undoing decades of religious restrictions while rocking its oil-dependent economy. These steps won the support of many Saudis, but they were accompanied by repressive measures.
The ruling, dated August 9, was issued in installments to the public. This came just weeks after US President Joe Biden visited the kingdom and held a meeting with Prince Mohammed, in which he said he pressured the Saudi leader on human rights.
Biden took office and vowed to turn Saudi Arabia into a "pariah" over the murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. The CIA concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the "capture or kill" mission, something the prince denied. But Biden has since been forced to step back and seek Saudi Arabia's help in increasing oil production to tame energy prices and rampant inflation.
ALQST said Al-Shehab was accused of supporting "those who seek to disturb public order," referring to her retweet in support of imprisoned dissidents, and "spreading false and malicious rumors on Twitter."
"ALQST is deeply concerned about Al-Shehab's peaceful activism and the extraordinary lengths of her prison sentence, which far exceed the stringent standards of repression already imposed by the Saudi authorities," the group said in a statement.
A spokesman for the University of Leeds said Al-Shehab is a postgraduate researcher in her final year at the university.