By Canadian Press

Blogger Raif Badawi freed from Saudi prison, Quebec-based wife says

Mar 11, 2022 | 12:45 PM

MONTREAL — After a decade in a Saudi prison, blogger and activist Raif Badawi was released Friday, his Quebec-based wife confirmed.

Ensaf Haidar, who lives with the couple’s three children in Sherbrooke, Que.,  tweeted that Badawi “is free.”

“#Raifisfree After 10 years in prison,” she wrote on the social media network.

His supporters and family had been calling for Badawi’s release since his sentence expired on Feb. 28. A spokesperson for the family said it had no other comment and that it isn’t clear what sentence conditions remain for him.

Last month, Montreal-based human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler, who represents Badawi internationally, said the release from prison had been expected sometime in March.

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Cotler, a former federal justice minister and founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, had warned that while his prison sentence was at an end, Badawi still faced a 10-year travel ban, a media ban and a punitive fine that was handed down at the time of sentencing.

“We’re talking about a kind of prison without walls where he’s deprived of travel for the next 10 years,” Cotler said at the time. “That would be continuing the punishment outside of prison that he was having inside prison — the severe pain of being deprived of being with his wife and children.”

Badawi was jailed in 2012 and sentenced in 2014 to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes and a fine of one million Saudi riyal — about $340,000 — for criticizing the country’s clerics in his writings.

Badawi’s sentence has drawn widespread international condemnation, and numerous organizations, governments and advocacy groups have called for his release over the years.

Last year, both the House of Commons and Senate voted in favour of the immigration minister using his discretionary power to grant Badawi Canadian citizenship, but that hasn’t happened yet.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 11, 2022.

Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press