UK student Salma al-Shehab released from Saudi prison, say campaigners
Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds University doctoral candidate who was handed a decades-long sentence for her tweets in 2022, has been released from a Saudi prison, human rights groups and advocates have reported.
The 36-year-old women's rights activist and mother of two sons was arrested in January 2021 during a family holiday in the kingdom's Eastern Province.
Rights groups say Shehab was held for nearly 10 months in solitary confinement and interrogated at length before she was brought to trial and convicted for following and retweeting dissidents and activists on Twitter, the social media platform now known as X.
She was originally sentenced to six years imprisonment in March 2022, but her sentence was drastically increased six months later during an appeal to 34 years in prison, plus a 34-year travel ban, drawing international criticism of the Saudi government.
In January 2023, her sentence was reduced to 27 years, and then again reduced during a retrial last September to four years, with a four-year suspension.
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The UK-based human rights group Alqst, which has documented Shehab's case and advocated for her freedom, said on Monday that she had been held arbitrarily for four years "on the basis of her peaceful activism".
'Her full freedom must now be granted, including the right to travel to complete her studies'
- Alqst statement
"Her full freedom must now be granted, including the right to travel to complete her studies," the organisation said.
Alqst and other groups published an open letter last month welcoming the decision by the Saudi court to reduce Shehab's sentence in September, calling it a "significant step to correct a gross miscarriage of justice".
In 2023, Shehab and seven other women went on a hunger strike to protest against their imprisonment and calling for their release. The rights groups say Shehab's health had deteriorated while behind bars.
Middle East Eye has asked the UK Foreign Office for comment.
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