Saudi Arabia continues to escalate sentences against individuals for freedom of expression. The Court of Appeals recently issued a 15-year sentence for a Tunisian resident Mahdia Marzougui.
Marzougui (October 15, 1971), is a nurse who has been working in Medina since 2008. In July 2020, she was arrested and transferred to the General Investigation Prison in the city of Jeddah. She remained in the investigation for almost ten months, and in April 2021, the first session was held before the Specialized Criminal Court. Despite being a foreigner, her country's consulate did not interfere and did not appoint a lawyer for her.
Marzougui was charged with several charges, all related to the use of social media. Among the charges brought against her: retweeting and posting on Twitter and Facebook, which the prosecution considered praising a terrorist organization through her Twitter account, and seeking to destabilize the social fabric by retweeting.
Before the judge, Marzougui confirmed that the tweets she posted were general news and that the number of her followers on social media does not exceed 100, exactly 86 followers. Yet, the court sentenced her in January 2022 to 3 years and six months in prison, with a one-year suspended sentence, and deportation after the expiry date.
In October 2022, the Specialized Appeal Court overturned the sentence, to 15 years, in a similar move to what other activists have been subjected to recently, including Salma al-Shehab and Noura al-Qahtani.
The European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights considers that the sentence against nurse Mahdiya Marzougui is an expansion of revenge against anyone who expresses his opinion. ESOHR also considers that the recent approach taken by the Court of Appeal to double the verdicts and to retry the activists after the end of their sentence brings back to the fore information from judicial changes aimed at increasing its control.
ESOHR stresses that the lengthy sentences against citizens and residents for tweets and expression of opinion are an attempt to raise the severity of oppression and intimidation of society.