34 years in prison for Saudi female PhD student

Riyadh's Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) has sentenced 34-year-old Salma al-Shehab to 34 years in jail, and imposed a further 34-year travel ban, a sentence considered harsh even by Saudi standards.

The PhD student, who had been enrolled at the University of Leeds in the UK, was detained during a visit in her home country in December 2020.

She has now been found guilty of "assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilize civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts," according to the court papers which were obtained and translated into English by UK daily The Guardian.

For the mother of two young boys the verdict came as a shock since she had appealed a much shorter six-year sentence for "causing public unrest and destabilizing civil and national security on an internet website."