The Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, whose flogging sentence caused a global outcry, is awarded the 2015 Sakharov human rights prize. Mr Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes in Saudi Arabia for “insulting Islam”[https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/05/08/the-middle-ages-are-back-10-years-prison-1000-lashes-for-saudi-human-rights-defender/].
European Parliament President Martin Schulz urged Saudi King Salman “to free him, so he can accept the prize“. Mr Badawi’s wife Ensaf Haidar, now living Canada with their children, told AFP news agency that award was a “message of hope and courage”.
For more on the prize: http://www.brandsaviors.com/thedigest/award/sakharov-prize-freedom-thought.
[Earlier this year Badawi also won the Pen Pinter Prize and the Moral Courage Award].
Badawi was one of three nominees for this year’s prize along with assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and the Venezuelan opposition movement Mesa de la Unidad Democratica.
Source: Saudi blogger Raif Badawi awarded Sakharov human rights prize – BBC News
January 13, 2016 at 19:02
[…] Badawi, a well-known blogger who was awarded the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/saudi-blogger-raif-badawi-awarded-europes-sakharov-prize/). Moreover, Waleed Abulkhair, who is Samar’s ex-husband, is also serving a 15-year jail […]
May 23, 2016 at 14:51
[…] Nemtsov was in 2015 runner-up in the European Parliament’s Sakharov prize: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/saudi-blogger-raif-badawi-awarded-europes-sakharov-prize/ […]