Saudi Activist Jailed, Sparking Tension With Incoming Administration

The latest controversial sentencing handed down by a Saudi court has human rights groups, international bodies and the incoming United Stated administration up in arms. On Monday, Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent 31-year-old women’s rights activist, was jailed for nearly six years after she was convicted of trying to change the Saudi political system, demanding an end to male guardianship, attempting to apply for a United Nations job, and communicating with international rights groups and other local activists. Hathloul says she was repeatedly tortured since her 2018 arrest, including waterboarding, electric shocks, flogging and sexual assault. “My sister is not a terrorist, she is an activist,” her sister said Monday. “To be sentenced for her activism for the very reforms that MBS [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] and the Saudi kingdom so proudly tout is the ultimate hypocrisy.” The UN and several human rights groups condemned the prison sentence, while a US State Department spokesman said only that Washington was “concerned” by Hathloul’s jailing and was looking “forward to her anticipated early release in 2021.” President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, however, struck a harsher tone: “The Biden-Harris Administration will stand up against human rights violations wherever they occur,” he promised, echoing the next president’s vow to clamp down on Saudi transgressions.