Saudi king urged to halt flogging

(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called on Saudi Arabia yesterday to stop the serial flogging of an atheist and civil rights blogger sentenced to receive 1,000 lashes over an extended period.

Raif Badawi, who set up a website called "Free Saudi Liberals", received 50 lashes after Friday prayers last week and global rights groups say he is expected to be submitted to a second round today. "Flogging is in my view at very least a form of cruel and inhuman punishment," High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement from his Geneva office. As such, it was banned under international rights law, he added.

"I appeal to the King of Saudi Arabia to exercise his power to halt the public flogging by pardoning Badawi, and to urgently review this type of extraordinary harsh penalty," said Zeid, a former Jordanian diplomat.

Badawi was arrested in June 2012 and prosecutors originally asked that he be tried for apostasy - or leaving his religion. But a judge dismissed that charge and he was given 10 years jail and a fine of 1 million Saudi rials ($267,666), as well as the lashes, on charges including cybercrime after an earlier sentence of seven years and 600 lashes was found too lenient.