Saudi woman handed 45-year jail sentence found guilty of 'spreading lies through tweets': court document

A Saudi woman who was handed a 45-year jail term was found guilty of "spreading lies through tweets" and other alleged offences, a court document has indicated.

Mother-of-five Noura Al-Qahtani's situation came to light late last month. She is almost 50 and suffers from medical problems, court records cited by The Guardian showed.

Rights group DAWN's Gulf director, Abdullah Alaoudh, who lives in the US, provided the British newspaper with the document.

The file indicates that Al-Qahtani had allegedly used two anonymised Twitter profiles.

One of these was @Najma097, which is currently followed by 575 accounts and follows 293.

Some posts seem to criticise Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and be in favour of political detainees' rights.

The account's last available tweet was in July 2021.

It comes after Saudi academic and women's rights activist Salma Al-Shehab, a mother-of-two, was handed a 34-year jail sentence on appeal in August, with Amnesty International saying this was "solely for her writing and peaceful Twitter activity".

The incident sparked widespread criticism and damaged the kingdom's attempts to show it is liberalising and allowing women greater liberty and more rights.

Among the offences Al-Qahtani was found guilty of is the alleged "besmirching" of Prince Mohammed and King Salman.

She is further said to have "encouraged participation in activities that damage the security and stability of society and the state" and conveyed "support" for the ideology of people who want to "destabilise" Saudi Arabia.

Al-Qahtani was also found guilty of joining a group committed to these objectives on Twitter and following them on YouTube, and impeding the probe of her social media activity by "destroying and hiding the mobile phone" used in the "crime".

She was also found guilty of having a banned book by Abdullah Aloudh's father Salman Al-Awdah.

Salman, a noted reformist religious scholar, is currently imprisoned on a life sentence in Saudi Arabia.

Salma al-Shehab, a mother of two and a researcher at Leeds University in Britain, received a 34 year prison sentence in Saudi Arabia over some of her tweets.

Amnesty called Shehab's detention 'outrageous'. https://t.co/N4CBVxAOr5

— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) August 19, 2022

He has been jailed since 2017 after he used Twitter to urge reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Qatar after Riyadh led a since-lifted blockade of Qatar.

The book Al-Qahtani is accused of possessing wasn't one of the cleric's political works.

Abdullah, who called the book "very apolitical", said it was about self-improvement and combatting selfishness.

While Al-Qahtani was initially handed a 13-year jail term, this was extended to 45 years on appeal after a prosecutor said this was too soft.

According to the court document, Al-Qahtani's defence included her not being involved in terrorism and being almost 50 years old, not having a previous criminal record and regretting her tweets.

In addition to extending her jail term, Al-Qahtani was also handed a travel ban of 45 years to begin once she is released.

Her revised sentence was given on 9 August, the court document indicates.