France and Germany on Monday demanded a “quick release” of the activist, known for his fight for the right of women to drive in the kingdom.
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Emblematic figure of human rights defenders and of the repressive turn taken by the Saudi crown, feminist activist Loujaïne Al-Hathloul was sentenced on Monday, December 28 , to five years and eight months in prison by the kingdom’s anti-terrorism court; she was found guilty of intelligence with foreign parties and “various activities prohibited by the anti-terrorism law”. The verdict is accompanied by a suspension of sentence of two years and ten months. Detained for three years in solitary confinement, Loujaïne Al-Hathloul, 31, should therefore be released in March after nearly three years in detention.
The activist, known in particular for his fight for of women’s right to drive in the kingdom, was jailed in May 2018, along with four other human rights defenders, and then held in total isolation for seven months.
A warning to civil society
Three months earlier, she had been arrested in the United Arab Emirates, where she was residing, and had been handed over to the security services in Riyadh. Or a few months before the lifting of the ban on Saudi women driving; a decree then presented by the communicators of the regime as one of the flagship measures of a program of openness and social modernization driven by the crown prince of the Wahhabi power, Mohamed Ben Salman (known as “MBS”), within the framework of Vision 2030, its plan to modernize the kingdom.
These arrests of women presented as “traitors” by the media have sounded like a warning to civil society, a sign that any societal transformation in Saudi Arabia cannot be achieved. do that from above and the fact of the prince and should in no way appear as a concession granted to activists.
In October 2018, the image of reformer of MBS was definitely undermined by the expedition of a Saudi commando that assassinated the journalist and opponent Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul (Tu rkey). The following year, Saudi Arabia executed 184 people, according to Amnesty International. A record number in a year.
Riyadh had claimed to have arrested Loujaïne Al-Hathlouthi because she would have sought to undermine the authority of the royal family and thus change the constitutional order of the country. The “evidence” gathered posed a legal basis capable of silencing any beginning of dissent. And to intimidate any independent association.
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