After ten years in prison for “insult to Islam”Saudi blogger and human rights activist Raif Badawi, who has become a symbol of freedom of expression around the world, was released on Friday 11 March.
“Raif called me, he is free”, told Agence France-Presse his wife, Ensaf Haidar, very moved. A news confirmed by a Saudi security official on condition of anonymity.
The former winner of the Reporters Without Borders prize for freedom of the press, aged 38 today, was arrested in 2012, then sentenced at the end of 2014 to ten years in prison and 50 lashes a week for twenty weeks. for having pleaded, in particular, for the end of the influence of religion on public life. The first flogging in a public square in Saudi Arabia in 2015 shocked the world for its character “medieval”, in the words of a Swedish minister at the time. He was not whipped again afterwards.
For Colette Lelièvre, who followed the file for Amnesty International in Canada, it is a “great relief”. Ensaf Haidar, now a Canadian citizen, lives in Quebec, 150 kilometers from Montreal, with their three children. She said in February that she was able to maintain contact with her husband by talking to him “up to three times a week” by telephone.
She has been fighting for years for his release and for him to join them. Canada paved the way for Raif Badawi’s exile by placing him on a priority list of potential immigrants for humanitarian reasons.
Ban on leaving Saudi Arabia
But Amnesty recalls that the Saudi blogger remains for the moment subject to a ban on leaving the kingdom for ten years once his sentence has been served.
The brutal repression of dissenting voices and the imprisonment of activists in Saudi Arabia are to this day denounced by international NGOs and the UN, even if the kingdom seeks to improve its international image by undertaking certain reforms.
Sunni Muslim like the majority of Saudis, Raif Badawi studied economics and ran an institute for learning English and computer techniques, according to his wife. He enjoys reading and is known for his writings in favor of freedom of expression. The blogger won the 2014 RSF prize in the “Net-citizen” category. He was also chosen in 2015 by the leaders of the political groups of the European Parliament as the winner of the Sakharov Prize for freedom of expression. In 2015 and 2016, he was among the nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize.