Saudi women jailed for Twitter use should be freed: UN panel

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Saudi women sentenced to decades in prison over social media use have been held arbitrarily and should be released, according to UN expert findings seen Saturday by AFP. The lengthy jail terms handed down last year to Salma al-Shehab and Nourah al-Qahtani, primarily over Twitter posts criticising the government, have heightened global scrutiny of repression under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is trying to rebrand the Gulf kingdom as open for business and tourism. In a report dated June 19 and shared with AFP, the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, an independent expert panel, determined the women had been held arbitrarily and that «the appropriate remedy would be to release» them.

They should be given «an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law», it said. The UN experts also said there was credible evidence Shehab had faced «cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment» while in custody. The alleged abuses against her include «threats, insults, harassment and improper methods used during her interrogation», such as taking «advantage of (Shehab's) depression by interrogating her in the middle of the night, shortly after she had taken her antidepressant and sleeping pills».

Sources for the report included five groups representing the two women, among them the rights organisation ALQST, Democracy for the Arab World Now and MENA Rights Group. In its response to the expert panel, Saudi Arabia rejected the findings as «unfounded» and said they lacked «supporting evidence». The kingdom said the judicial process had been fair and denied Shehab had been mistreated.