Saudi Arabia: the scandalous conviction of Salma Al-Chehab – Archyde

He therefore found judges in Saudi Arabia to condemn, on August 9, to thirty-four years in prison, a doctoral student in dental medicine. For what crime? Having shared messages in favor of women’s rights on a Twitter account that has remained particularly confidential. At first instance, in 2021, a very heavy six-year prison sentence, three of which was suspended, had already been pronounced against Salma Al-Chehab, aged 34, mother of two children and who belongs to a Shiite minority who is often unfairly stigmatized. On appeal, the Saudi justice made this choice of the grotesque. A ban on leaving the kingdom for a similar amount of time was even added for good measure. This justice considered that the young woman, who was continuing her studies in the United Kingdom before her arrest during a visit to Saudi Arabia, “provided assistance to those who seek to disturb public order and to disseminate false and malicious information”. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers The grotesque sentencing of a Saudi woman to thirty-four years in prison for messages on Twitter In terms of ill will towards the kingdom, the judges behind this grotesque sentence have , in fact, broke all records. They justified the worst clichés of which the Saudi authorities are the first to complain. With such officials, Saudi Arabia needs no detractors. For the record, the heaviest sentence pronounced against the members of the commando responsible, in 2018, for the assassination and atrocious dismemberment of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, in the consulate of the kingdom in Istanbul, was fourteen years less than that which strikes Salma Al-Chehab… MBS accountable for this decision As we will not insult Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman, de facto master of the kingdom, to consider that his hands are tied by the principle of separation of powers, he is obviously accountable for this scandalous condemnation which moved even the United Nations. In turn, this sentence can only embarrass the Western leaders who participated in his recent rehabilitation after the Khashoggi affair. They are the President of the United States, Joe Biden, who met him in July in Jeddah, and Emmanuel Macron, who received him a little later in Paris. Even the most icy of realpolitiks should impose limits on arbitrariness, especially when claiming to defend values ​​such as equity and respect for human rights. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Saudi Arabia: Mohammed Ben Salman, the revenge of the outlaw We must hope that reason will soon return to the Saudi authorities and that this sentence which ridicules them in the eyes of the whole world will be quickly canceled. The reverse would testify to a worrying deafness on the part of a prince whose rise was marked as much by a particularly brutal bringing to heel of his peers, within a monarchy where power had long been exercised in a collegiate, than by particularly risky decisions, such as the devastating and futile war 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 counted his energy to install the story of a reforming prince, determined to pull the kingdom from immobility and to anticipate the end of the oil income which today swells the Saudi coffers. The strategic choice of a greater openness of the kingdom to the world, in particular through tourism, is however incompatible with the habits and customs of a satrap illustrated by the iniquitous condemnation of Salma Al-Chehab. The world