Raif Badawi gets 10 years and 1000 lashes for apostasy

by WO Admin | Middle East

Saudi Arabia upholds sentence for blogger Raif Badawi..

Aljazeerah

Brloogger: Raef Badawi

Raif Badawi, arraigned in 2013 by a Saudi Court after he was accused of apostasy is to spend 10 years in jail and 1000 lashes of can.

Aljazeerah reports Sunday, that Saudi Arabia's Supreme Court has upheld the sentence for the jailed blogger Raif Badawi, quoting Human Rights Group Amnesty International.

Badawi (35) was arrested in 2012 in the city of Jeddah, and later sentenced to seven years in jail and 600 lashes for setting up the website "Free Saudi Liberals" and for allegedly insulting Islam.

An appeals court later overturned the ruling and ordered a retrial. In May 2014, in addition to a harsher sentence, the court ordered Badawi to pay a $266,000 (£175,000) fine.

In January, Badawi was lashed 50 times in public, despite widespread international outrage and calls for clemency from human rights groups.

Saudi Arabia later postponed his public lashings, supposed to be conducted weekly after Friday prayers, on medical grounds, according to Amnesty.

The United Nations joined a chorus of countries, including the United States, that called for Badawi to be pardoned.

But the Saudi Court upheld the sentence rather than pardon him.

Larger Banner of Blogger Raef Badawi written in German
by Amnesty International. (Credit: via Aljazeerah ).

Raef Badawi was jailed for setting up "liberal" network and insulting Islam, a charged that could have led him to face the death penalty in Saudi Arabia.

* Reports and photos from Aljazeerah, Amnesty International