Saudi Arabia seeks 'unprecedented' death penalty for woman activist

Saudi prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a female activist for the first time.

None of the charges against Israa al-Ghomgham are for violent acts, according to Human Rights Watch Saudi Arabia researcher Hiba Zayadin. “It is unprecedented that they would seek the death penalty for a woman,” Zayadin told NBC News on Wednesday. Saudi Arabian officials were not immediately available to comment on the case.

The kingdom’s public prosecutor behind the charges reports directly to King Salman and “by proxy” his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, she added. Ghomgham is among five Shiite Muslim activists from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province currently on trial and facing the death penalty in a secretive terrorism court, according to Human Rights Watch. Most people executed in the Gulf kingdom are beheaded with a sword, according to Reprieve, an international charity focused on the death penalty.

The charges against the group that Ghomgham is part of include incitement to protest, chanting slogans hostile to the regime, attempting to inflame public opinion, and providing moral support to rioters. The crown prince, who is widely seen as the power behind the throne, has been on an intense international public relations campaign to tout the kingdom’s efforts to transform the Saudi economy and return the deeply conservative society to “moderate” Islam. Women have been granted permission to drive and more freely work outside the home, and the country’s fearsome religious police have been defanged.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, have embraced the crown prince as a close and crucial partner in the administration’s Middle East strategy. Trump went to Saudi Arabia — an absolute monarchy where political parties and protests are banned — in his first foreign trip as president.

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