21 August 2015

Raif Badawi: Wife of Saudi blogger launches campaign to free African writer on death row for criticising prophet Mohamed

The wife of Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger sentenced to ten years in jail and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam, has launched a campaign to free an African writer who is on death row in Mauritania for criticising the prophet Mohamed.

In an article for The Independent, Ensaf Haider said that while “millions of people around the world” had campaigned for her husband’s release, the case of Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir risked being forgotten by the international community.

The 30-year-old journalist was arrested in January last year after publishing an article on the website of the newspaper Aqlame. In it, he criticised the Mauritanian caste system and said that certain social groups were being marginalised because of their religion. [The Independent] Read more