DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Saudi cartoonist who once drew for a Qatari newspaper as a yearslong diplomatic crisis engulfed Doha has been sentenced to 23 years in prison, an activist group says.
The sentence for Mohammed al-Ghamdi marks the latest in a widening judicial crackdown on any perceived dissent in Saudi Arabia since the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, now seen as the kingdom’s day-to-day ruler in place of his 88-year-old father King Salman.
Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday from The Associated Press.
Al-Ghamdi drew under the pen name Al-Hazza, with some of his cartoons poking fun at challenges during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, as well as touching occasionally on the politics of the Middle East. But political cartoons, like the content of Arabic-language newspapers in the Gulf states, must carefully thread the needle when discussing the region’s autocratic rulers even in the best of times.
But al-Ghamdi had been working for the Qatari newspaper Lusail as a yearslong diplomatic boycott of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain began in 2017. That initially sparked a prison sentence for al-Ghamdi of six years from Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court over charges denied by the cartoonist including that his work allegedly insulted the kingdom.
But in recent months, the case was reopened and al-Ghamdi received an unappealable 23-year sentence, according to SANAD, a United Kingdom-based human rights organization focused on Saudi Arabia.
“This situation underscores the urgent need for international action to protect artistic freedom and human rights in Saudi Arabia,” SANAD said. “Al-Ghamdi’s case exemplifies the troubling climate in Saudi Arabia, where no one is truly safe; he became a target simply for being an artist, nothing else.”
Prince Mohammed has moved toward liberalizing some aspects of life in the ultraconservative kingdom. He also has pursued massive building projects and other diplomatic deals to raise his profile globally.
Meanwhile, the prince has solidified his power in part through imprisoning the country’s elite and others who speak out. A doctoral student, Salma al-Shehab, and others face decadeslong prison sentences over their comments online.
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