- Target:
- My Member of Parliament
- Region:
- GLOBAL
Raif Baddawi is a Saudi blogger who was sentenced last May 2014 to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes on charges related to accusations that he insulted Islam on a liberal online forum he had created. The lashings were administered at 50 a session once a week over 20 weeks. In addition to the brutal whippings Baddawi ordered by the Jiddah Criminal Court to pay a fine of 1 million Saudi riyals, or about £175,900.
He has been held since mid-2012, and his Free Saudi Liberals website is now closed. Badawi was originally sentenced in 2013 to seven years in prison and 600 lashes in relation to the charges, but after an appeal, the judge stiffened the punishment. Baddawi's only crime was daring to create a public forum and peacefully exercising the right to freedom of expression.
Badawi's lawyer Waleed Abul-Khair was sentenced in July to 15 years imprisonment and barred from traveling for another 15 years after being found guilty by an anti-terrorism court of "undermining the regime and officials," ''inciting public opinion" and "insulting the judiciary."
We the undersigned request that the British government publicly condemns the deplorable and savage treatment meted out to Raif Baddawi by the Saudi Arabian authorities, and that it demands his immediate and unconditional release.
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The FREE Raif Baddawi - a forgotten victim of Saudi oppression and cruelty petition to My Member of Parliament was written by Mike Rook and is in the category Human Rights at GoPetition.