A student was jailed for her tweets – thank the Saudi regime’s enablers

In Saudi state television footage, Salma al-Shehab speaks to a journalist at the Riyadh International Book Fair in Riyadh, in 2014. Photograph: Saudi state television/AP

I hope fist-bumping a tyrant was worth it, Biden!

Salma al-Shehab is sitting in prison because of a retweet. The 34-year-old Leeds University student and mother of two young boys was travelling home to Saudi Arabia for a holiday when she found herself summoned to a special terrorism court and charged with using a website to “cause public unrest and destabilize civil and national security”. What does that mean in plain English? She had a Twitter account and retweeted some dissidents. For that “crime”, she has been sentenced to 34 years in prison and, just to make sure she really learns her lesson, has also been given a 34-year travel ban.