Saudi Arabia sentences Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh to death, Human Rights

A Palestinian artist sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for apostasy was quoted by a local news website Thursday as saying that he is not an atheist and that his case centers around a personal dispute he had with someone.

That same month, Fayadh’s friends say he had filmed a member of the religious police slapping a man on the face and forcibly pinning him against a wall in Abha. Fayadh has 30 days to file his appeal.

Raeda Fayadh insists her younger brother Ashraf, 32, who faces execution as an apostate, is a believing Muslim and innocent of any wrongdoing.

Besides Amnesty International campaigning on their behalf, a group of United Nations experts and the European Parliament have both urged Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of Ali al-Nimr.

Saudi Shariah Courts can issue discretionary judgments on a wide number of crimes, which also gives way to leniency.

While judges in the initial trial also accepted Fayadh’s repentance for anything deemed offensive or insulting to religion in his book of poetry, judges in the retrial questioned whether repentance can nullify a proscribed punishment in a case involving “hadd”, which in Islam are specific crimes such as apostasy for which punishment is considered fixed. He was eventually charged with blasphemy and having illicit relationships with women.

Fayadh’s sentence comes near the end of a record year for executions in Saudi Arabia. Though he was born in the Gulf country, his status as a stateless Palestinian made him an especially vulnerable target, they say.

Murad Soudani, head of the Palestinian Writers Union, said in a statement that he was in contact with officials in Saudi Arabia to try to get Fayadh released.

On May 26, 2014, the General Court of Abha convicted Fayadh and sentenced him to four years in prison and 800 lashes.

The country’s justice ministry would “sue the person who described… the sentencing of a man to death for apostasy as being “ISIS-like”, a source within the ministry told the pro-government newspaperAl-Riyadh. “The sentence must be approved by the appeals court and the Supreme Court”, the group stated. “The sentences were based on confessions extracted under torture, trials that barred them from access to defence counsel and judges that displayed bias towards the prosecution”.

“Repentance is a work of the heart relevant to matter of the judiciary of the hereafter; it is not the focus of the earthly judiciary”, the ruling said.

On Tuesday, Amnesty International launched an urgent action appeal calling for Fayadh’s release and denounced the Saudi court’s refusal for the poet and artist’s request for legal representation.

“The authorities carried out dozens of executions, many by public beheading”. According to the interpretation of Sharia by the Wahhabi, heretical or blasphemous views will attract nothing short of death penalty, as reported by Newsweek.

Their call came as the family of one Shiite activist, sentenced to death after protesting, voiced concern over his fate and a rights group warned of his imminent execution.