A Saudi court sentenced Mohamed Al-Ezzi to 15 years in prison after arresting him from the street in November 2021 for sharing his opinions on Twitter. Following his arrest, security forces raided his home and office and searched them.
Over the past two months, Saudi courts issued prison sentences to a number of activists and academics for very long periods, merely for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
The sentences varied between 30 to 50 years in prison, as it sentenced the human rights activists Salma Al-Shehab and Noura Al-Qahtani to 34 and 40 years for their peaceful activism on Twitter, and 50 years for Abdullah Al-Huwaiti and Abdullah Dakhi Al-Hueaiti for standing with their family in rejecting the forced displacement from their homes to establish the NEOM project.
On October 10, the Saudi judiciary sentenced 10 men from the Egyptian Nubian community to 10 and 18 years in prison for organising a peaceful event in memory of the October War.
On 14 October the Specialised Criminal Court in Terrorism Cases sentenced academic Abdullah Basfar to 12 years in prison for accepting to lead a prayer in the courtyard of the Hagia Sophia Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, about eight years ago.
