SAUDI ARABIA: FREE BLOGGER SENTENCED TO FLOGGING
Raif Badawi should be in Canada today, with his wife and their threechildren. Instead he is serving his sentence in al-Islahya prison in
Jeddah city, Saudi Arabia.
Authorities arrested Raif Badawi on 17 June 2012. They charged him
with insulting Islam and creating the “Free Saudi Liberal Network”
website for social and political debate. The charges related to articles
Raif wrote and to his involvement in creating and managing a website
that hosted comments deemed “insulting to Islam” by the authorities.
Raif Badawi’s case bounced back and forth between courts until 7 May
2014. On that day, the Criminal Court pronounced a sentence of 10 years
in prison, 1,000 lashes and a fine of one million Saudi Arabian riyals
(about US$ 266,600). After he serves a decade in prison, he is also
forbidden to travel for the following decade and from publishing and
participating in the media.
