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Manahel al-Otaibi, an activist for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, was secretly sentenced to 11 years in prison for “her choice of clothing and support for women’s rights,” Amnesty International and the human rights organization ALQST said on Tuesday.
Al-Otaibi, 29, was arrested in November 2022 for reportedly breaking Saudi Arabia’s anti-cyber-crime law. Authorities claimed that her social-media videos showed her breaking the kingdom’s counterterrorism law while wearing “indecent” clothing. However, human rights activists say al-Otaibi was arrested for using social media to criticize and call for an end to Saudi Arabia’s controversial male-guardianship system, which allows male relatives to make critical decisions about women’s lives for them. She was also opposed to wearing an abaya and shared her disapproval on Snapchat and other unspecified social media.
The BBC reports that al-Otaibi supported Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s progressive reforms in 2017. Months before her arrest, she told a German outlet that under his leadership, she felt comfortable and free to wear what she wanted, but as the kingdom cracked down on criticism, she was detained. According to Amnesty International and ALQST, the kingdom’s terrorism court secretly sentenced al-Otaibi in early January, but her punishment wasn’t revealed until weeks later when the Saudi government responded to an official request from U.N. human rights experts inquiring about her case.
In its response, the Saudi mission in Geneva said the court found al-Otaibi guilty of “terrorism offenses” under its controversial counterterrorism law. The law punishes anyone “who creates, launches, or uses a website or a program on a computer or on an electronic device to commit terrorism” and “any person who, by any means, broadcasts or publishes news, statements, false or malicious rumors, or the like for committing a terrorist crime.”
Amnesty International and ALQST report that al-Otaibi’s sister, Fawzia al-Otaibi, is facing similar charges, but she fled from Saudi Arabia in 2022 out of fear that she would be arrested.
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Tariro Mzezewa , 2024-05-02 20:31:23
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