Al-Khoder, a former professor of Islamic jurisprudence, was previously sentenced to eight years in prison in 2013 by a criminal court for offences including "disobeying the ruler" and "taking part in founding an unlicensed organization".
A terrorism tribunal in Saudi Arabia, which was elected
to the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2013, has sentenced two political
activists to decade-long prison terms for establishing a rights
organisation, Amnesty International said on Monday.
Abdulkareem
al-Khoder, one of 11 founding members of the Saudi Civil and Political
Rights Association (ACPRA), was sentenced to 10 years in prison under a
year-old counter-terrorism law, London-based Amnesty said.
On
Wednesday, another ACPRA member, Abdulrahman al-Hamid, was given nine
years in prison followed by a nine-year travel ban, it said. His brother
Issa al-Hamid was due to be sentenced the same week, but the court
session was postponed to November.
The sentences
dealt a further blow to civil rights activism in Saudi Arabia that has
been targeted by a sweeping security crackdown since the Arab Spring
uprisings of 2011. All 11 of ACPRA's founding members are either jailed
or awaiting trial.
"The outrageous convictions of
ACPRA members for their human rights activism, coming on top of Saudi
Arabia's already appalling human rights record, makes a further mockery
of its obligations as a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council," said
James Lynch, Middle East director at Amnesty.
A Saudi
judiciary spokesman was not immediately available for comment. The
Interior Ministry has previously said ACPRA's involvement in a string of
protests against what it called extrajudicial imprisonment of suspected
militants had led to attacks in the kingdom.
Al-Khoder,
a former professor of Islamic jurisprudence, was previously sentenced
to eight years in prison in 2013 by a criminal court for offences
including "disobeying the ruler" and "taking part in founding an
unlicensed organization".
His conviction comes amid a
flurry of activity by the Saudi Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), a
tribunal established in 2008 to try terrorism cases, but often used for
political offences.
The SCC recently reopened its
case against ACPRA's youngest member, Omar al-Sa'id, who likewise was
sentenced in 2013 to four years imprisonment and 200 lashes.
Last
Tuesday, the court sentenced another activist, Abdulaziz Abdulatif
Alsonaidi, to eight years in prison and a travel ban, according to the
Canada-based Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. Alsonaidi was
charged with signing an ACPRA petition and writing tweets critical of
the king, the group said in a statement.
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