The history of charges and court rulings regarding Raif Badawy's apostasy has been published earlier. We are giving below the third update on change.org petition site by Atheer Al-Ani ,Magdeburg, Germany:
"Raef Badawi, a Saudi who is one of the establishers of the "Liberal Saudi Network", which angered Ultra-orthodox clerics of Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison.Originally, he was expected to be sentenced to death for apostasy, for instance, as published by AFP:
“A Saudi court on Monday referred a rights activist to a higher court for alleged apostasy, a charge that could lead to the death penalty in the ultra-conservative kingdom, activists said.
A judge at a lower court referred Raef Badawi to a higher court, declaring that he "could not give a verdict in a case of apostasy," a rights activist told AFP. Apostasy means renunciation of a religious faith.
Badawi, who was arrested in June in the Red Sea city of Jeddah for unknown reasons, is a co-founder of the Saudi Liberal Network with female rights activist Suad al-Shammari and others.”
The petition demands" that Saudi Arabia free and safeguard
Raef Badawy and stop threatening people merely for
expressing nonorthodox views on Islam or religion in
general, because without freedom of speech, one can not
counter the dangerous beliefs of extremist Islam that leads
ultimately to terrorism and threatens the safety of all people
around the world."
We request you to sign the petition to
free Raif Badawy.
Please share the petition
and spread the word.
The twitter hash tag is: #FreeRaif
The petition link
Thank You.
