US Senator Urges Saudi Arabia to Release Human Rights Activists

WASHINGTON, January 17 (Sputnik) — Saudi Arabia has to stop its crackdown on human rights defenders and must release the founder of the Monitor of Human Rights group Abu al-Khair and blogger Raif Bawadi, US Senator Patrick Leahy has stressed.

"I urge the Saudi government to release Mr. Abu al-Khair and Mr. Badawi and dismiss the spurious charges against them. This kind of repression and barbarity have no place in the 21st century," Leahy said in a statement released Friday.

On Monday, Al-Khair, the founder and director of the watchdog group Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, on January 12 received a five-year extension to his ten-year prison sentence for insulting the Saudi judicial system and harming the kingdom's reputation. His brother-in-law Bawadi, a Saudi atheist and rights blogger, has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes for cybercrime.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein called on Thursday for Saudi Arabia to halt the punishment of Raef Badawi.

"It is ironic that while Saudi officials condemned the brutal killings of journalists at Charlie Hebdo, and their Ambassador attended the rally in Paris, their Justice Ministry was preparing to carry out the first of 1,000 public lashings of Raif Bawadi," Leahy stressed in his statement.

On January 11, a unity rally was held in Paris in memory of those killed during the terrorist attack on the office of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine.

Over a million people, including 40 top world officials, showed up at the rally to express their support for freedom of speech and commemorate the killed journalists.

The United States did not send a top official to the march and was represented by US Ambassador to France Jane Hartley.