August 17, 2022
"A Saudi student at Leeds University who had returned home to the kingdom for a holiday has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account..."
"... and for following and retweeting dissidents and activists.
The sentencing by Saudi’s special terrorist court was handed down weeks after the US president Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, which human rights activists had warned could embolden the kingdom to escalate its crackdown on dissidents and other pro-democracy activists.... Salma al-Shehab, 34, a mother of two young children, was initially sentenced to serve three years in prison for the 'crime' of using an internet website to 'cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security.' But an appeals court on Monday handed down the new sentence – 34 years in prison followed by a 34-year travel ban – after a public prosecutor asked the court to consider other alleged crimes.... By all accounts, Shehab was not a leading or especially vocal Saudi activist...."
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41 comments:
This is one of our allies.
One is known by one's associates, as they say.
I don't feel sorry for her. Like Brittany Grinder, she knew exactly what she was doing and broke the law. These type of uppity woke women think they can do whatever.
This is a sad thing to happen. Biden won't care.
I will say, though, that I'm not surprised, and this is a further reason that mindlessly following Twitter Accounts because you have nothing better to do, and re-tweeting things that you think in the spur of the moment are sensible can be a very bad idea.
I have a Twitter Account for my job. I tweet out information only, or like things that are relevant to my work. My personal Twitter Account lies dormant. Twitter for Advocacy's sake is just tedium to read/follow.
sentenced to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account..."
"... and for following and retweeting dissidents and activists
So was she sentenced for "having a Twitter account" or for "Retweeting dissidents and activists"?
I had never heard that it was illegal to have a Twitter account in Saudi Arabia. I suspect the crime was really "using an internet website to 'cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security.'"
But that does not make a very good headline.
We are not far from this ourselves. We are close to making spreading mis and disinformation a terrorist crime. We still have people locked up for more than 18 months without charges on suspicion of... well what exactly? I don't think anyone has been charged so far for anything more serious than "parading" or "trespassing" Those convicted may not have gotten 34 years but they have gotten as much as 10 years for crimes that would normally be 30 days in jail at the very worst.
John LGBTQ+ Henry
Pelosi's hamster is stirring. Future American Headline:
Trump supporter jailed after returning home from a vacation to Florida.
The cynic in me says this is just another attempt by the PGA to make LIV golf go away...
kinda makes you wonder, what the other alleged crimes were? OR, at least; it SHOULD
When respectable opinion in the United States doesn't believe in free speech, it becomes hard to push other countries toward it.
Funny. Just a month ago I was reading about how the Saudi Government wanted to focus on growing tourism into their country.
This story from the Guardian would suggest they need a new marketing plan.
for following and retweeting dissidents and activists
One man's dissidents and activists is another's conspiracy theorists and disinformation providers.
Freedom of speech means not having to worry about who might be in a position to decide.
Wow, that’s cruel. 3 years ago, we were energy independent and could speak out about such things. Now, Biden needs Saudi oil to keep the lights on and give him a $.25 drop in gasoline pump prices, because winning in November is more important than foreign or domestic policy. Besides, Nancy Pelosi wants to do the same for dissidents in the US.
The Saudi student was not able to use Twitter to spread Russian disinformation about Hunter Biden's laptop computer.
Imagine living in a country where the judge might sentence you based on crimes that had never been charged, or on which you had been acquitted. What kind of barbarous, repressive regime would allow such a thing?
How many Americans are rotting in jail for demonstrating in DC right now?
The Saudi's just invested billions into Blackrock - because Blackrock is all in for Corporate Social Justice and the death of American energy supply.
Or - Saudi Xi in bed with Democrat elites.
So what steps has Twitter taken to rectify this situation? Did they pull out of Saudi Arabia? Cancel the royal families' accounts? Raise the issue far and wide to shame the Saudi's into modifying their behavior? Anything??
To quote my appointed moral and intellectual betters:
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
More seriously, I'm in favor of anything that reduces the Saudi population in Britain for the next 34 years, even if only by 1. I have no concern whatsoever for whatever legal standards or practices people "East of Suez" hold or enforce on and among their own kind.
We are almost there ourselves. Look at our very own political prisoners in the DC gulag. Most for taking selfies in OUR HOUSE, the Capitol.
What Saudi Arabia does would not be out of place in an Arabic kingdom several centuries earlier, other than the technology involved, and would have been standard practice pretty much everywhere at some point in the past. I am not saying this makes this a good thing - it is not, and this particular case is absurdly cruel - only to put the kingdom in context so you understand what it is doing.
That said, I do have to wonder if the powers that be in the kingdom have thought this through. When they murdered the "journalist" who was, in fact, a high profile player in potentially overthrowing the government, they got hell. This is arguably worse. That said, I do wonder how much the elites care. The "journalist" was one of them; this woman is the equivalent of an anonymous peasant which they may or may not deign to concern. Plus with the current energy crunch perhaps they don't think anyone would dare.
Assuming anyone does care, I suspect the crown prince will show mercy, the warning have been sent.
While the government in the US is not supposed to restrict free speech except for extreme examples (for example, yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater when there is none, making threats of bodily harm or death), the Dems’ wet dream is to restrict speech depending on what they are feeling on a particular day. Having Obama and Biden appointed federal judges may help them with that goal since they tend to make up what they think the Constitution SHOULD SAY instead of what IT ACTUALLY SAYS versus other presidential appointed judges / SC justices.
The current major issue that the US has is if a person, particularly conservatives, says, tweets, or posts something online that is unpopular or contrary to what liberals and particularly Regressives (TM) think, these lefties will attack those who are outside of the groupthink with online posts, tweets, or even publicly against the “offender”. These doxxed people have lost their jobs, their livelihoods, and may have trouble finding a new job when prospective employers research them online and come across these “negative” and possibly false postings. They may lose their friends and become estranged from their families. All for expressing an opinion. And the Dems are really cool with this as they approve of such doxxings without the government getting dragged into a 1st Amendment lawsuit as it is lefty government approved speech police without government intervention. Win-win for them! This doxxing will have the same effect as to what the Saudis are doing to this woman by destroying their lives without having to imprison anyone.
Robert Cook wrote: "This is one of our allies."
Robert ... the US has interests, not allies. Our interest in Saudi Arabia is using up all their oil. Trading our ever more worthless cash for it and hording our own oil supply for the future. We're trying to do that as quickly as possible. Once they have no more oil, and we still have our oil, and they have our worthless cash, then we can let the desert take care of the Saudi's. They'll be back to humping camels in no time.
ah yes the guardian I trust their account implicitly, they will their insurrection obsession and upholding rioters
Rehajm said: "The cynic in me says this is just another attempt by the PGA to make LIV golf go away..."
Yep. That's partly what it is. I see that Patrick Reed has filed a $750 million lawsuit against Brandle Shamblee and the Golf Channel this morning. It's going to be very interesting seeing these golfers using the Saudi money to put Brandle in the poorhouse.
The real news here is that Saudi Arabia had employees at Twitter, who identified these people for extermination. Twitter killed this guy. He won't be the last. Twitter's very design is to identify the people that those in power want to go away either by jailing them or killing them. Saudi Arabia is just leading the pack. Setting the precedent so that it becomes normal.
The Democrats are already using Twitter in exactly the same way, except for the jail part, which costs money. They're making people unemployable, homeless, unable to eat in restaurants, #Cancel Culture etc. Probably worse than jail.
Twitter cannot be allowed to exist in a free country. It is incompatible.
Howard said...I don't feel sorry for her. Like Brittany Grinder, she knew exactly what she was doing and broke the law. These type of uppity woke women think they can do whatever.
Facetious? I know there are two Howards on here, one an obnoxious lefty troll and the other and more or less normal right-of-center poster, but the last sentence is too Mobyish to be the non-jerk Howard.
I too immediately thought of Brittany Grinder, but there's a difference--al-Shehab wasn't going to a poorly understood foreign country, she was going home. She has less excuse. That said, if you can't bring yourself to have sympathy for someone sentenced to 34 years in jail for a bit of online activism, then I don't know what to say to you. Or in Howard's case, if it's just another opportunity to needle the MAGA crowd, then you're pathetic.
ah yes the guardian I trust their account implicitly
The Guardian is known to conflate logical domains, and, perhaps, accounts, when they're not outright publishing handmade tales to support their special and peculiar causes.
Democrats won't care, because they want to do the exact same thing here: Jail "Dissedents" who don't tweet the "correct praise Biden!" ideology.
There are diverse precedents. That said, not Twitter, not follow, but ReTwittering that Twitter would consider aiding and abetting then censor perchance censure perchance cancel. Umbrella Corporation, too. DNC #MeToo.
Blogger tim in vermont said...
How many Americans are rotting in jail for demonstrating in DC right now?
Exactly and Howard is all in on it.
Jan 6th protesters are rotthing in jail for Tresspass. We're not better than Saudi Arabia. And then there's the opposite thing in the USA, where people commit murder and they're out on bail or never charged or spend a few years in jail after a plea bargin.
I'll take the Saudi system.
"Howard said...I don't feel sorry for her. Like Brittany Grinder, she knew exactly what she was doing and broke the law. These type of uppity woke women think they can do whatever.
Facetious? I know there are two Howards on here, one an obnoxious lefty troll and the other and more or less normal right-of-center poster, but the last sentence is too Mobyish to be the non-jerk Howard."
I like to think of Howard as this little community's Titania McGrath. I enjoy his posts immensely when I read him through this lense.
All the more reason for the US to return to a state of energy independence.
Whatever...their country, their rules.
Too bad she isn't a really tall, black lesbian
This was why I tried to discourage my younger sister from taking a teaching job in Riyadh, but she made a big deal about how she'd "looked into it" and decided the KSA is a lot better now and she felt she'd be fine there.
Since she's a US citizen who doesn't use social media, maybe she even will be. Even so, I really wish she'd either stayed at the job in India or taken one of the other offers she got outside of the Middle East. Ah well.
You can't go home again.
At one point all of will learn that Islam is one, great big bad idea. Sadly have learned it right at the point of their death at the hands of the jihadists who are acting according to the lights of Big Mo himself and the instructions found in Islam's holy books.
Earnest Prole: "You can't go home again."
There is no parable of the Prodigal Son in the koran.
Howard said...
I don't feel sorry for her. Like Brittany Grinder, she knew exactly what she was doing and broke the law.
Maybe the UK should consider trading a convicted arms dealer for her.
Howard said...
I don't feel sorry for her. Like Brittany Grinder, she knew exactly what she was doing and broke the law.
Maybe the UK should consider trading a convicted arms dealer for her.
tommyesq said...
So what steps has Twitter taken to rectify this situation? Did they pull out of Saudi Arabia? Cancel the royal families' accounts? Raise the issue far and wide to shame the Saudi's into modifying their behavior? Anything??
Well, they did nod approvingly.
Rocco said...
Well, [Twitter] did nod approvingly.
Was that approvingly? or enviously?
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