A Saudi woman has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for following and retweeting activists on Twitter who were critical of the kingdom.
Saudi Arabia’s special terrorist court determined that Salma al-Shehab, 34, had used her Twitter account to “cause public unrest and destabilize civil and national security” when she was first arrested and tried in January 2021, according to multiple reports.
That sentence gave Ms. al-Shehab a six-year prison term. An appeals court on Aug. 8 upped her sentence to three-plus decades after a public prosecutor asked them to consider additional alleged crimes.
Those crimes involved occasionally retweeting exiled Saudi dissidents who commented on political prisoners and supporting Saudi feminist activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was previously imprisoned and is alleged to have been tortured for supporting allowing women to drive.