DUBAI, July 30 (Reuters) - The editor of a Saudi Arabian
social website has been sentenced to seven years in prison and
600 lashes for founding an Internet forum that violates Islamic
values and propagates liberal thought, Saudi media reported on
Tuesday.
Raif Badawi, who started the "Free Saudi Liberals" website
to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, has been held
since June 2012 on charges of cyber crime and disobeying his
father - a crime in the conservative kingdom and top U.S. ally.
Al-Watan newspaper said the judge had also ordered the
closure of the website.
France was concerned by the sentence and remained committed
to "freedom of opinion and of expression", the foreign ministry
said in a statement. Officials from the Saudi National Society
for Human Rights could not be reached for comment.
Badawi's website included articles that were critical of
senior religious figures such as the Grand Mufti, according to
Human Rights Watch.
The watchdog said in December that Badawi faced a possible
death sentence after a judge cited him for apostasy, but
Al-Watan said the judge dropped the apostasy charges.
Apostasy, the act of changing religious affiliation, carries
an automatic death sentence in Saudi Arabia, along with other
crimes including blasphemy.
Badawi's wife denied her husband had expressed repentance
before the judge on Monday at a court in the Red Sea city of
Jeddah. "The judge asked Raif 'Are you a Muslim?' and he said
'Yes, and I don't accept anyone to cast doubt on (my belief)',"
she wrote on Twitter.
The world's top oil exporter follows the strict Wahhabi
school of Islam and applies Islamic law, or sharia.
Judges base their decisions on their own interpretation of
religious law rather than on a written legal code or on
precedent.
King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's ruler, has pushed for reforms
to the legal system, including improved training for judges and
the introduction of precedent to standardise verdicts and make
courts more transparent.
However, Saudi lawyers say that conservatives in the Justice
Ministry and the judiciary have resisted implementing many of
the changes announced in 2007.
(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; additional reporting by
Alexandria Sage in Paris, editing by Elizabeth Piper)
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