Saudi Arabia jails a young singer who refuses to advocate normalization of relations with Israel

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Human Rights organization ALQST revealed that singer Abdulaziz Al-Odah, who was arrested in September 2019, was sentenced by the Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh to five years of imprisonment, with a suspension for a period of two years and six months for his refusal to advocate for normalization with the Israeli entity.

ALQST has called on the Saudi authorities to drop the charges and immediately release him. 

The Prisoners of Conscience, Twitter account, had learned that the Saudi authorities had arrested singer Abdulaziz Al-Odah against the backdrop of tweets in which he defended the Palestinian cause. His arrest came as a result of Odah’s constant defense of the Palestinian cause and his rejection of the wave of normalization of relations with Israel that the Saudi authorities are trying to make acceptable within Saudi society.

The Saudi authorities imposed travel ban on some people with popular Tweeter accounts because of their stand for the the Palestinian issue. Some have signed pledges not to talk about Palestine, normalization, or support the Palestinian resistance.

Unlike what the Saudi Arabia's biased media is trying to portray, Abdulaziz al-Odah, is not related to Islamic preacher Salman al-Awdah. Due to his wide popularity among classes of the Saudi society, the hashtag Abdulaziz took off on Twitter, and loyalists and opponents alike expressed their sympathy for the young man.

Al-Odah is not the first to be arrested because of his opposition to normalization of relations with Israel and his support for the Palestinian cause. The Saudi authorities have previously arrested dozens of preachers, academics and netizens for their refusal of Saudi Arabia's normalization of relations with Israel, which they consider their enemy.

 

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