Saudi Arabia sentenced a woman to 34 years in prison for tweeting

Alex Castro / The Verge

A woman in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for sharing posts in favor of the right of women to drive on her social media accounts. After returning to Saudi Arabia for a vacation, Salma al-Shehab was arrested and held in the UK for over a year.

Shehab was sentenced to six years in prison for using social media to disturb public order and destabilizing the security and stability of the state, after he reshared a call for the release of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia.

The incident was reported in an editorial board piece from The Washington Post, which said it was another glimpse at the brutal underside of the Saudi dictatorship.

According to US intelligence services, Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, approved the killing of the Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist, who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, in the summer of last year.

According to The Post, Shehab was sentenced to 34 years in prison on August 8th, after prosecutors argued for a harsher punishment under Saudi anti- terrorism laws. This is the longest known sentence for a woman's rights activist in Saudi Arabia, according to the Freedom Initiative.

Saudi activists who advocate for change are at risk of being punished for doing so. In July, President Joe Biden drew criticism from human rights groups for his trip to Saudi Arabia, a trip that he justified in his own Post op-ed as being necessary to secure access to energy resources and strategic trade routes in the region. Various sources disagreed with Biden's claim that he told Saudi officials that he held the Saudis responsible for the death of the journalist.

According to a report in The Guardian, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia indirectly controls a large stake in the social networking site. The case has not been issued by the social networking site.

Text messages disclosed in a shareholder lawsuit show that Musk believed the PIF would help him takeTesla private.