A court in Saudi
Arabia has sentenced a man to ten years in prison and 2,000 lashes for
expressing his atheism on Twitter.
The 28-year-old
reportedly refused to repent, insisting what he wrote reflected his beliefs and
that he had the right to express them.
The hardline Islamic
state’s religious police in charge of monitoring social networks found more
than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing Koranic verses, and
accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teaching fuelled hostilities.
The court also fined him around £4,000.
He was sentenced
under a controversial law that defines atheism as “terrorism”.
In 2014 the late
King Abdullah issued a string of royal decrees aimed at clamping down on all
forms of political dissent and protests that could “harm public order”.
Article one of the
new provisions defined terrorism as “calling for atheist thought in any form,
or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this
country is based”.Link
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