Suspense
So this is good news, and could be a sign of more good news – The Montreal Gazette reports that Raif Badawi’s sentence to flogging has been suspended.
A jailed Saudi blogger is having his sentence of 1,000 lashings suspended, the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs told newspaper La Liberté.
…
“A pardon is now underway thanks to the head of state, the king Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud,”State Secretary Yves Rossier told the Swiss newspaper.
Here’s hoping.
H/t Bjarte
Not too much hope. This is Saudi, remember. Raif can be retried, his sentence arbitrarily changed, pardons and clemencies shuffled back and forth, as many times a day as the corrupt princelings wish.
The “pardon” should be accompanied by a vast apology that such a thing is the only way to reverse religious lunacy in that wretched country. And then by a list of royal edicts that establish basic human rights and prevent such crimes of state from ever happening again.
/*hollow laughter*/
Oh I’m not thinking the Saud family have suddenly gone all human rightsy. I’m just glad to see Raif perhaps spared the floggings. There are of course other Raifs…
Pressing my thumbs but not holding my breath.
Hope Raif gets the hell outta that hell, soon.
Tha’s nice and all, but it is clear they are only caving to public pressure on this one case, with many more ‘prisoners of conscience’ victims being swept under the carpet. Possibly this is a result of all the coverage of this outrage being wall to wall Raif Badawi Raif Badawi Raif Ba-Raif Badawi Raif Raif Raif B-Raif BadaRaifRaifRAIF BADAWI – with no mention of anyone else. It’s nice for that one person, but I think too many reports and such completely ignored the other equally deserving people.
And yes, that’s even assuming they manage to grant this one concession, which is by no means guaranteed.
The Saudis “caving to public pressure” is no minor accomplishment when dealing with a government which has so far cried “interference” when other governments object to flagrant human rights abuses in what they consider to be their private affairs. Granted, most of the focus has been on Raif, but I have heard numerous mentions of others – for example, Waleed Abulkhair who has been imprisoned for the crime of setting up the “Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. In a kafkaesque move, the Saudi government denied Abulkhair a license for his organization and then sent him to jail for running “an unlicensed organization”. (And as an aside, Abulkhair is also Raif’s lawyer.)
May one suppose that the US administration has been talking privately to the saudis? Ah well – probably not. Certainly I don’t recall any public statements or representations. In fact it is embarassing how silent Obama is regarding lack of human rights in KSA; particularly when he has been so vocal on the subject with regard to nations he claims to be threats to “national security” – such as Syria or Russia. Also embarassing when he refers to the saudi barbarians as our allies when they are in fact our enemies and one of the worst state sponsors of terrorism in the world.
Any pardon,to be sincere, should be accompanied by a one-way ticket to Sherbrooke QC.
@ 8
Yes exactly. Raif won’t be safe until he’s out of Saudi Arabia.
And the lack of criticism directed at the country’s atrocious human rights record by any western leader is astounding.
The place is worse than South Africa was under apartheid…de-facto slavery is rampant…and yet no one ever takes them to task for these abuses.