The Saudi Arabian Supreme Court on Sunday upheld the conviction of liberal blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced last year by a lower court to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes.
Thirty-one-year-old Raif Badawi, the founder of Liberal Saudi Network, was arrested in 2012 for "insulting Islam through electronic channels," according to BBC.
Badawi's wife Ensaf Haidar, who lives in Canada with the couple's three children, expressed shocked over the decision.
"This is a final decision that is irrevocable," she told Agence France-Presse. "I was optimistic that the advent of Ramandan and the arrival of a new king would bring a pardon for the prisoners of conscience, including my husband."
The lower court had sentenced Badawi to a 10-year jail term and 1,000 lashes to be given out 50 at a time over 20 weeks, reported Gulf News.
Badawi received the first 50 lashes on Jan. 9 in a public square in Jeddah in front of hundreds of people, reported The National. Subsequent rounds of lashes were postponed on medical grounds.
An online video of Badawi's lashings caused outrage and the governments of U.S. and Canada have pleaded for clemency, reported Gulf Business. Followers of Liberal Saudi Network and free speech supporters took to social media with the hashtag #backlash, which went viral immediately.
Human rights group Amnesty International said the decision was a dark day for freedom of expression in the kingdom, according to a statement.
"It is abhorrent that this cruel and unjust sentence has been upheld. Blogging is not a crime and Raif Badawi is being punished merely for daring to exercise his right to freedom of expression," said Philip Luther, director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme.
"By failing to overturn the sentence Saudi Arabian authorities today have displayed a callous disregard to justice and to the tens of thousands of voices around the world calling for his immediate and unconditional release," he said.
The Liberal Saudi Network was an online platform that debated political and religious issues.
"You have the right to express and think whatever you want as you have the right to declare what you think about it, it is your right to believe or think, have the right to love and to hate, from your right to be a liberal or Islamist," Badawi wrote in a post on the forum, according to The National.
