Since his exile in Canada with their three children, Ensaf Haidar exulted on Friday March 11 when he learned of the release of her husband, the blogger and free thinker Raif Badawi: he had been imprisoned in Saudi Arabia since 2012. Multiplying rallies and seizures speaking, Ensaf Haidar had relentlessly kept the attention on the confinement of her 38-year-old husband. His imprisonment had been regularly denounced as arbitrary by human rights organisations. But the reunion promises to be a new battle to be fought for his relatives and these organizations, unless there is a royal “pardon”: Raif Badawi is under a ban on leaving the territory. His release is not a gesture of leniency: according to Amnesty International, the Saudi had finished serving his prison sentence on 1er March.
Wave of international solidarity
The imprisonment of the father of the family for “insulting Islam” had raised a wave of international solidarity, in particular because of his sentence to a thousand lashes, in addition to ten years in prison. Because of this mobilization, the flogging sessions had been interrupted after the first fifty lashes. International distinctions had been awarded to Raif Badawi, including the Sakharov Prize awarded by the European Parliament in 2015. His name was one of those that Western diplomats whispered in the ear of the Saudi authorities when pleading for a release, failing to openly criticize the kingdom for the repression of protesting voices.
Raif Badawi had sparked the ire of the kingdom for his mockery of the religious police and the liberal views he expressed on an online forum. His sister, Samar Badawi, another tough guy, who was also imprisoned for several years, is also under a travel ban. A measure that allows the Saudi crown to ensure that the Badawi duo will not play spoilsport in exile.
