Abdullah al-Maliki, a writer who defended members of the banned civil rights group ACRPA, was tried under a counter-terrorism law and sentenced to seven years. "These prison sentences handed down against several writers and journalists are based on nothing more than their freedom of expression, namely tweeting in support of human rights," Yahya Assiri, a Saudi Arabian human rights activist, told the Middle East Eye. Abdulaziz al-Shubaily and Issa al-Hamid, founding members of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), were also detained. Pioneering human rights activist Abdullah al-Hamid, another ACRPA co-founder who had been earlier detained, died this year while in custody. The wave of arrests also targeted feminist and human rights activists, powerful business figures and judges in what Human Rights Watch described as “a coordinated crackdown on dissent”.

Source: Ethiopian News September 04, 2020 13:30 UTC