The famous blogger of Saudi Arabia, and an activist ‘Raif Badawi’ whose conviction caused widespread global anger, was finally released from prison on Friday after ten years in prison on the charges of criticising the country’s conservative religious establishment Quebec-based wife confirmed.
Ensaf Haidar, who lives with the couple’s three children in the city of Sherbrooke, tweeted that the 2015 winner of Europe’s Sakharov human rights award “is free.” A spokesperson stated that ‘no comments’.
However, Badawi’s sentence expired last month on February 28 and Montreal based human rights lawyer ‘Irwin Cotler’ who represents Badawi globally, stated that the release from prison is expected to have on March last month.
‘Cotler’, an ex-federal justice minister and inventor of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, had given a warning to Badawi still faced a decade of the ban on travelling, a media ban and a punitive fine that was handed down at the time of sentencing.
According to Cotler, “We’re talking about a kind of prison that made with no walls and where he deprived of travel for the next ten years, and that punishment would go even after the outside of prison that he was having inside prison –the intense pain of being robbed of being with his wife and children.”
Badawi went to jail in 2012 and was sentenced in 2014 to 10 years, 1000 lashes and also a fine of one million Saudi riyals- 3,40,000 in dollars – for criticising the country’s clerics in his writings.
Most of the floggings were suspended, but he ultimately regretted 50 lashes before hundreds of viewers in the city of Jiddah in 2015. Badawi’s feet and hands were tied during the flogging, but his face was visible.
In 2015, Badawi got a “Prestigious Sakharov Prize” for human rights by the European Union, and the US State Department and the United Nations‘ high commissioner for human rights called on the KIngdom to rescind the sentence.
In 2021, the Canada House of Commons and Senate encouraged the immigration minister to grant citizenship of Cnaad to Badawi, but it has not been issued yet. His wife, however, has citizenship in Canada.
According to rights groups, Badawi’s sister Samar was also imprisoned in 2018 in a crackdown targeting female activists who had peacefully advocated for greater freedoms. She was freed last year.