Yesterday Saudi Arabia freed 24-year-old Hamza Kashgari after he served 20 months in prison over a series of Tweets he posted expressing conflicting feelings about the Prophet Muhammad. After threats from religious conservatives over the Tweets when they appeared, Kashgari had fled the country. However he was extradited by Malaysian authorities when Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud ordered his arrest. (See
prior posting.) The
Wall Street Journal reports that after his release yesterday Kashgari quickly opened a new Twitter account. In a press release, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reacted to the release, saying:
While Hamza Kashgari’s release is a step in the right direction, he never should have been detained in the first place.
USCIRF urges the Saudi government to take the next step and release online editor Raif Badawi and writer Turki al-Hamad. Badawi was unjustly convicted in July and sentenced to seven years in prison for insulting Islam and al-Hamad has been in detained without charge since December 2012 after reportedly publishing a series of tweets calling for the reform of Islamist teachings.
USCIRF further urges the Saudi government to end state prosecution of individuals charged with blasphemy and apostasy. Laws that punish expression deemed blasphemous, defamatory, or insulting to religion are incompatible with international human rights standards and exacerbate religious intolerance, discrimination and violence.”
