Saudi Arabia has sentenced a secondary schoolgirl to 18 years in jail and imposed a travel ban for posting tweets in support of political prisoners, according to a rights group.
On Friday, ALQST rights group, which documents human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, revealed that the Saudi Specialised Criminal Court handed out the sentence in August to 18-year-old Manal al-Gafiri, who was only 17 at the time of her arrest.
The Saudi judiciary, under the de facto rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has issued several extreme prison sentences over “cyber activism” and the use of social media for criticising the government.
They include the recent death penalty against Mohammed al-Ghamdi, a retired Saudi teacher, was given the death penalty for comments made on Twitter and YouTube.
According to Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch, Ghamdi was sentenced under a counterterrorism law passed in 2017, shortly after Mohammed bin Salman became crown prince. The law has been criticised for its broad definition of terrorism.
Similarly, two new bodies - the Presidency of State Security and the Public Prosecution Office - were established by royal decrees in the same year.
Rights groups have said that the 2017 overhaul of the kingdom's security apparatus has significantly enabled the repression of Saudi opposition voices.