Ali al-Nimr’s sentence was reduced to ten years in prison by the Specialized Criminal Court on Sunday, according to the human rights group Reprieve.
His father, Mohammed al-Nimr, who attended the trial in Riyadh, said his son, now 26, should be released in eight or nine months after spending more than nine years’ of his youth and part of his childhood ‘spent in jail. .
The cousin of the executed firefighter Nimr al-Nimr, Ali al-Nimr, was arrested in 2012 at the age of 17 for taking part in protests calling for social and political reforms in the quiet Qatif province of Saudi Arabia. He was sentenced to death.
A court later found him guilty of charges of belonging to a terrorist cell, assaulting police with Molotov cocktails, incitement and arson of sectarianism, according to state media.
Anyone who received a death sentence after being convicted of crimes they committed as a minor would receive a prison sentence of no more than ten years in a juvenile detention facility, according to a statement from the state-aided Human Rights Commission (HRC). ) time.
“My family and I are happy. I hope everyone arrested in my country and elsewhere will be released,” his father told CNN after Sunday’s verdict. However, he explained he wished his son had been acquitted by the judges “because he is actually innocent.”
“His health is good, but he has been in prison for more than nine years. He has spent more than seven years with the threat of execution hanging over his head every day, every hour and every minute. After the verdict, he was able to breathe. “From today he looks forward to freedom,” his father added.
When the royal decision was announced last April, it was hoped that it could potentially save the men of the Shiite minority, who allegedly committed as a minor, from the death penalty. Ali al-Nimr is the most important of these – with United Nations experts and human rights organizations previously urging Saudi authorities to reverse his death sentence.
“It feels strange to talk about progress when a young man has spent almost a decade on the underworld for attending a peaceful demonstration, but today’s ruling is clearly a positive step. Ali al-Nimr must now “But true change is not about a few high-profile cases; it means making sure that no one in Saudi Arabia is ever sentenced to death again for a child crime,” said Maya Foa, director of Reprieve. said.
The organization insists that the royal decision be urgently applied to the cases of other young people still facing the death penalty, including Abdullah al-Zaher, Dawood al-Marhoon and Mohammed al-Faraj.