Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger whose public flogging has triggered global outrage, will not be lashed on schedule on Friday after a medical assessment showed he was unfit to face the punishment again, theguardianUK reports
The planned flogging is being suspended after a medical committee assessed that he should not undergo a second round on health grounds, said Amnesty International, which has adopted him as a prisoner of conscience.
The committee, comprising about eight doctors, carried out a series of tests on Badawi at the King Fahd hospital in Jeddah on Wednesday and recommended that the flogging should not be carried out, Amnesty said on Thursday.
Badawi, 31, was sentenced last May to 10 years’ imprisonment and 1,000 lashes – 50 at a time over 20 weeks – and fined 1m Saudi riyals (£175,000). He has been held since mid-2012, and his Free Saudi Liberals website, established to encourage debate on religious and political matters in Saudi Arabia, is closed. He received his first 50 lashes on 9 January, but the punishment was not carried out a week later.
The postponement suggests that the Saudi authorities are not impervious to the global wave of protests and vigils about the case. It was unclear whether the issue would be raised on Thursday by the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, in a meeting with the Saudi deputy foreign minster in the margins of a counter-terrorist conference in London. Britain has said it will raise the case with the authorities in Riyadh. Amnesty has accused the UK of being “muzzled” by its commercial and defence interests in the conservative kingdom.
“Instead of continuing to torment Raif Badawi by dragging out his ordeal with repeated assessments, the authorities should publicly announce an end to his flogging and release him immediately and unconditionally,” said Said Boumedouha, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.
“Raif Badawi is still at risk. There is no way of knowing whether the Saudi Arabian authorities will disregard the medical advice and allow the flogging to go ahead.”
On 9 January Badawi was shown on a YouTube video being beaten in a square outside a mosque in Jeddah, watched by a crowd of several hundred who shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and clapped and whistled after the flogging ended. Badawi made no sound during the flogging and was able to walk unaided afterwards. His wife has said she fears he may not be able to physically withstand another flogging.
Earlier this week Amnesty - along with the British Medical Association and Freedom from Torture - staged a conference of medical health professionals to discuss the ethical and practical challenges facing forensic physicians as they confront torture.
Amnesty International UK’s Stop Torture campaign manager, Tom Davies, said: “Why are doctors in Saudi Arabia taking any part in a process that is clearly a vicious act of cruelty?
“All medical professionals have a clear duty to avoid any involvement in acts of torture and cruel treatment whatsoever. Indeed, they should be reporting their suspicions that abuse is taking place if they come across it.
“Rather than providing pre-flogging medical assessments, prison doctors in Saudi Arabia should refuse to participate in the calculated cruelty of Raif Badawi’s punishment.”
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