Saudi Woman Jailed for 34 Years for Using Twitter

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A Saudi woman has been sentenced to 34 years in prison at home for having her own Twitter account and retweeting posts by “dissidents and activists.”

Salma al-Shebab, 34, studied at the University of Leeds but returned to her home country in December 2020 for a holiday. After the holidays, she would take her husband and two children to the United Kingdom after the holidays.

During her stay in Saudi Arabia, however, she was called for questioning by local law enforcement and eventually arrested for her tweets. She was initially sentenced to three years in prison, but Al-Shebab appealed the conviction. But that didn’t go as planned. On Monday, an appeals court imposed an even harsher sentence on her: 34 years in prison, followed by a 34-year travel ban.

Al-Shebab’s crime is officially described as “using a website to cause public unrest and destabilize civil and national security.”

Salma al-Shebab had both an Instagram and a Twitter account. She had 159 followers on Instagram and described herself as a dental hygienist, medical educator, Ph.D. student at the University of Leeds, and mother of her sons Noah and Adam.

She had 2,597 followers on Twitter, and between tweets about Covid burnouts and photos of her young children, she sometimes retweeted posts by Saudi dissidents living in exile. For example, she appeared to support the case of Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent feminist activist who was imprisoned and tortured for championing women’s driver’s licenses.

Although it is believed that the woman can still appeal against this conviction, this case points to the repressive campaign that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is conducting against Twitter users. That while he controls a large indirect stake in the American social media company through the Saudi state wealth fund PIF.