On Women’s Day & Mother’s Day, Saudi Female Prisoner Sentenced to Life Imprisonment
The Saudi regime recently announced a series of important and necessary reforms to enhance public freedoms and rights. However, these reforms remain only ink on paper.
Well-informed sources confirmed that the Saudi Criminal Court sentenced the female political activist Maryam Al Qaisum to 25 years in prison, followed by a 25-year travel ban.
The court’s order came after more than four years of her arbitrary detention, to coincide with International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day and shortly before the holy month of Ramadan. .
Maryam Al Qaisum is a Saudi activist and human rights defender. She was arrested in February 2019 over her human rights and pro-democracy political activism. She was classified by Saudi authorities as a terrorist. Furthermore, she was subjected to enforced disappearance for several months before being brought to court.
During her trial, Maryam was denied access to legal representation. The judges refused to investigate her torture allegations. She was later sentenced to life imprisonment after an unfair trial that violates the internationally agreed standards of fair trial.
Al Qaisum is currently being held in the notorious Dammam prison, where prisoners of conscience are subjected to a brutal and inhuman treatment and deprived of their most basic human rights guaranteed by both domestic and international laws, amid total medical negligence.
Maryam Al Qaisum is not the only woman to be arbitrary held in Saudi prisons serving harsh prison sentences. Salma Al Shehab, Noura Al-Qahtani, and Loujain Al-Hathloul were all subjected to brutal torture and serious human rights violations in Saudi jails.
In this regard, we call on the Saudi authority to free all political prisoners arbitrary held in its prisons as we stress the need for an urgent international intervention to put an end to the Saudi repressive and unfair practices against the dissident voices, to investigate all the unfair prison sentences