Saudi blogger Raif Badawi freed after decade in prison
Saudi Arabian blogger and activ Raif Badawi, whose conviction caused widespread international outrage, was released Friday after a decade in prison for criticising the country’s conservative religious establishment, his Quebec-based wife confirmed.
Ensaf Haidar, who lives with the couple’s three children in the city of Sherbrooke, tweeted that the 2015 winner of Europe’s Sakharov human rights award “is free.” A spokesperson for the family said it had no other comment.
Badawi’s sentence expired on February 28 and Montreal-based human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler, who represents Badawi internationally, said last month the release from prison had been expected sometime in March.
Cotler, a former federal justice miner and founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, had warned that Badawi still faced a 10-year travel ban, a media ban and a punitive fine that was handed down at the time of sentencing.
“We’re talking about a kind of prison without walls where he’s deprived of travel for the next 10 years,” Cotler said at the time. “That would be continuing the punishment outside of prison that he was having inside prison — the severe pain of being deprived of being with his wife and children.”
Badawi was jailed in 2012 and sentenced in 2014 to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes and a fine of one million Saudi riyals — now about $340,000 — for criticising the country’s clerics in his writings.
#Raifestlibre Après 10 ans de détention #Raifestlibre ! #Raifisfree After 10 years in prison #Raifisfree !بعد 10 سنوات من السجن #رائف_حرّاً pic.twitter.com/1VA0XjSofs
— Ensaf Haidar ⚜️ (@miss9afi) March 11, 2022
Most of the floggings were suspended, but he eventually suffered 50 lashes before hundreds of spectators in the city of Jiddah in 2015. Badawi’s feet and hands were shackled during the flogging but his face was visible.
The punishment roused outrage and condemnation from around the world, including from many of Saudi Arabia’s allies.
The European Union awarded Badawi the prestigious Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2015 and the US State Department and the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights called on the kingdom to rescind the sentence.
Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Sweden and stopped issuing work visas for Swedes in 2015 after the Scandinavian country’s foreign miner described the Badawi decision as “medieval” and said the kingdom’s ruling Al Saud family presided over a “dictatorship”.
Last year, both Canada’s House of Commons and Senate urged the immigration miner to grant Badawi Canadian citizenship, but that hasn’t happened yet. His wife, however, does have Canadian citizenship.
Badawi’s ser Samar also was imprisoned in 2018 in a crackdown targeting female activs who had peacefully advocated for greater freedoms, according to rights groups. She was freed last year.
Canadian criticism of her case led the Saudi government to expel Canada’s ambassador and withdrew its own ambassador. It also halted flights its national airline and ordered Saudi students in Canada to return home.
Samar Badawi and others had criticised Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship laws, which gave husbands, fathers and in some cases a woman’s own son control over her ability to obtain a passport and travel. They had also advocated for the right of women to drive. Both restrictions have since been lifted.
Samar Badawi, who also faced a ban on travel, first came to prominence when she petitioned Saudi courts to remove her father as her legal guardian on grounds he was barring her from marrying potential suitors. Years later, she spoke out in defense of her brother Raif.
