Wednesday,
October 16, 2024 -A Saudi artist has reportedly been sentenced to
more than two decades in prison over political cartoons that allegedly insulted
the Gulf kingdom's leadership.
Father of five, Mohammed al-Hazza, 48, was arrested in February 2018 in
Saudi Arabia during 'a violent raid' in which security forces entered his home
and ransacked his studio, the London-based Sanad Human Rights Organisation said
in a statement.
A court document seen by AFP says the charges against him concern
'offensive cartoons' he produced for the Qatari newspaper Lusail as well as
social media posts that were allegedly 'hostile' to Saudi Arabia and supportive
of Qatar.
Saudi Arabia's Specialised Criminal Court, set up in 2008 to deal with
terrorism-related cases, initially sentenced Hazza to six years in prison.
But this year, as Hazza was preparing to be released, the case was
re-opened and he was sentenced to 23 years, his sister Asrar al-Hazza told AFP
by phone from the United States.
'He was almost there... He almost left the prison. But then out of
nowhere it was opened again and it was 23 years,' she said.
Saudi authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment
about the case on Wednesday.
Sanad said in its statement that Hazza worked for Lusail mostly before
the 2017 boycott 'and only briefly afterward' and that most of his cartoons
concerned domestic Qatari issues.
The group said prosecutors failed to provide evidence of cartoons that
were offensive to Saudi Arabia or social media posts that backed Qatar during
the boycott.
Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has been criticised
for what activists describe as a fierce crackdown on even vaguely critical
online speech.
In the past two years, the Saudi judiciary has 'convicted and handed
down lengthy prison terms on dozens of individuals for their expression on
social media', human rights groups Amnesty International and ALQST said in
April.
Saudi officials say the accused committed terrorism-related offences.
'The case of Mohammed al-Hazza is one example of the suppression of
freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia, which has not spared anyone, including
artists,' Sanad operations manager Samer Alshumrani told AFP.
‘This is supported by the politicised, non-independent judiciary in
Saudi Arabia.’
Al-Hazza's sentence comes days after Saudi Arabia was denied a seat on
the UN's Human Rights Council.
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