Jailed Saudi blogger sentenced to flogging gets human rights prize

Jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has been awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament.

“I urge the king of Saudi Arabia to free him, so he can accept the prize”, European Parliament President Martin Schulz said.

Badawi was arrested in 2012 for offences including insulting Islam, cyber crime and disobeying his father.

In 2013, a court in the Red Sea city of Jeddah sentenced him to seven years in jail and 600 lashes for insulting Islam and setting up the liberal network. In addition to the prison time, is has been fined $266,000 and condemned to receive 1,000 lashes.

She called on Saudi leader King Salman to “gracefully end my husband’s ordeal and to pardon him”, and allow him to be deported to Canada.

The award was also hailed by the global Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) which said he had played a major role in promoting freedom of expression and attempting to foster public debate in Saudi Arabia.

Badawi’s wife and children have fled to Canada because of death threats. He received the first 50 of his 1,000 lashes in a public display in January 2015.

Human rights organisation Amnesty worldwide called the flogging “a vicious act of cruelty, which is prohibited under global law”.

This week his wife, Ensaf Haidar, said she had been notified that her husband would soon be flogged again.

Badawi was selected from a shortlist by British poet, journalist and critic James Fenton, who in June was chosen as the 2015 PEN Pinter Prize victor.

Elsewhere, it was revealed British national Karl Andree, 74, who was imprisoned for possessing alcohol in Saudi Arabia will be released within a week, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has said. Previous laureates include Aung San Suu Kyi and Malala Yousafzai. In 2014, it was awarded to Denis Mukwege, a gynecologic surgeon in the Democratic Republic of Congo who has devoted himself to victims of organized sexual violence.

The two other candidates for the prize this year were Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down in front of the Kremlin in February, and a coalition of opposition groups in Venezuela, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, which formed in 2008 in response to the government of President Hugo Chávez.