The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has sentenced a schoolgirl to 18 years in prison for using X, formerly Twitter for expressing her opinions, according to Alqst, a UK-based rights group.
18-year-old Manal Saleh Al-Qufairi was sentenced during an appeal at the Special Criminal Court (SCC) in August for posting tweets in support of prisoners of conscience.
The court also imposed an 18-year travel ban on her. Al-Qufairi was arrested when she was only 17 years old.
The Prisoners of Conscience account, which specializes in reporting the news of Saudi detainees, confirmed the authenticity of the news.
This is not the first time the kingdom has punished someone for using social media.
Since Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, became the Saudi crown prince in June 2017, dozens of Imams, women’s rights activists, and members of the ruling royal family have been detained.
In August 2022, a woman named Salma Al-Shehab was sentenced to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account and for posting tweets about activists and critics of the Mohammed bin Salman regime.
In August 2022, Nourah al-Qahtani, a mother of five, was sentenced a week later to 45 years in prison over tweets from two anonymous accounts.
In August 2022, the Kingdom also sentenced a prominent former imam and preacher at the Grand Mosque in Makkah Sheikh Saleh Al Talib to ten years in prison.
In August, the Kingdom handed a death sentence to Mohammed al-Ghamdi, a retired teacher and brother of a prominent Saudi preacher for tweeting about human rights.
On Wednesday, September 20, Saudi Crown Prince confirmed Ghamdi’s sentence during a wide-ranging interview with Fox News on Wednesday. He blamed it on “bad laws” that he could not change.
“We are not happy with that. We are ashamed of that. But [under] the jury system, you have to follow the laws, and I cannot tell a judge [to] do that and ignore the law, because… that’s against the rule of law,” he said.
