RIYADH, (AFP) - A Saudi appeals court has sentenced a Saudi woman to 45 years in prison for "disrupting public order" over social media posts, weeks after another activist was sentenced to 34 years in prison over tweets, the rights group said. A human rights activist examined the case papers on Tuesday.

The Criminal Court of Appeal in Riyadh, which specializes in terrorism crimes, sentenced Noura bint Saeed Al-Qahtani, 45, to prison on charges of “seeking to destabilize the social fabric and national cohesion and disturb the cohesion of society and its public order … through the Internet,” according to what the Democracy Now Foundation for the Arab World (Dawn) reported. ) and is based in Washington.

The foundation said that the verdict against Al-Qahtani was issued "probably during the last week."

Al-Qahtani, about whom not much is known yet, was tried under the Anti-Terrorism and Financing Crimes Law after her arrest in July 2021.

Part of the case papers was seen by AFP, but they could not be independently verified.

It was not immediately possible to obtain comment from the Saudi authorities.

Al-Qahtani has the right to appeal the ruling before the Supreme Court within 30 days of receiving the court's decision, according to the Saudi legal system.

The new ruling comes a few weeks after the prison sentence of doctoral student Salma Al-Shehab, 34, for her conviction on appeal on charges of “providing aid” to opponents seeking to “destabilize the state” due to tweets and retweets on Twitter.

Al-Shehab also has the right to overturn the ruling, according to the case documents, which were seen by AFP at the time.
Saudi Arabia intensified its campaign against activists, weeks after US President Joe Biden met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The move represented a setback for Biden, who had promised during his election campaign to turn the kingdom into a "pariah" state, in light of the case of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 and its human rights record.

Biden refrained from communicating for more than a year and a half with the crown prince, the de facto ruler of his country, but the war in Ukraine and the record rise in oil prices caused by it prompted Biden to break the western isolation imposed on the Saudi crown prince since the killing of Khashoggi.

Abdullah Al-Odah, research director at the Democracy Now Foundation, which was founded by Khashoggi himself, said, “Just weeks after the shocking sentence issued this month imprisoning Salma Al-Shehab, 34 years, the 45-year prison sentence for Al-Qahtani, apparently for simply tweeting about her views, shows how emboldened the Saudi authorities feel to punish even Less criticism from its citizens.

In a statement, he indicated that it was "impossible not to link the meeting" of the crown prince and Biden in Jeddah with "the escalation in repressive attacks against anyone who dares criticize the crown prince or the Saudi government."

And he told AFP that there have been "many similar cases recently" involving the arrest of people on the background of their posts on social media.

Al-Shehab, a mother of two, who is studying a doctorate on a scholarship from Princess Nora University of Saudi Arabia in the field of dentistry at the University of Leeds in England, was arrested while she was on vacation in Saudi Arabia in January 2021.

A close friend of the Saudi activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that Al-Shehab did not take threats to report her to security "seriously."

Shehab, she said, "didn't think security would be interested in someone with less than 2,000 followers."

These rulings come within the framework of a widespread crackdown targeting activists and human rights defenders in the Gulf kingdom with prison sentences and long-term travel bans.