Hadi Al-Mutif, a Shi’ite who had been on death row in Saudi Arabia for 16 of his 34 years, was sentenced to another five years in jail for criticizing the Saudi justice system, says Reuters. Al-Mutif was punished after his statements to US-funded Al-Hurra television in 2007 criticizing the Saudi justice system and the US-supported Saudi monarchy’s human rights record.

"He said that he was a victim of sectarian segregation," said Mohamed Al-Askar, a leading Ismaili activist. Al-Mutif’s imprisonment has become a rallying call for Ismailis, a Shi’ite minority based in the Najran area bordering Yemen. The Ismailis say that Sunnis are favored for jobs, housing, and land and complain that they cannot practice their religious rites openly.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report that ethnic tensions in Saudi Arabia were at their sharpest in years. Saudi Arabia follows Wahhabism, a puritanical form of Sunni Islam. Many Wahhabis view Shi’ites as heretics.

Sarah Leah Witson, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director, remarked, “All the Saudi Shia want is for their government to respect their identity and treat them equally… Yet Saudi authorities routinely treat these people with scorn and suspicion."

This year protests broke out in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia where most Shi’ites live. They followed clashes in the holy city of Medina between Shi’ites and Sunni religious police. "The fact that they have not executed [al-Mutif] for 16 years shows they are looking for a solution… It is not going to be easy for them, especially when you have some hard-line Sunni clerics controlling courts” said a Western diplomat in Riyadh.

The diplomat added, "They must be coercive with clerics on this case because it has attracted a lot of international attention and there could be a political price even at home.”

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), in a statement on their website, condemned the decision of the Saudi courts to extend Al-Mutif’s sentence. The BBG, which oversees all US international civilian broadcasting including Al-Hurra, noted that Al-Mutif had commented on the Al-Hurra program “Eye on Democracy” that “the Saudi judicial system discriminates against Shiite and Ismaili Muslims.”

The BBG says that Al-Mutif used a smuggled cell phone and videotaped his comments that were later aired on Al-Hurra’s Arabic-language satellite television program. “It is disturbing that a person will be so severely punished just for voicing his opinion," said D. Jeffrey Hirschberg of the BBG.

Last month the King Abullah of the Saudi royal family released 17 Ismailis jailed after clashes with police in 2000. The king ordered a reform of the justice system two years ago, which would create an appeal court system and codified laws. Judges, who are Islamic legal scholars, have broad powers in sentencing.

In other related news, Saudi University Professor Yousuf Al-Ahmad, in an interview by MEMRI, condemned Al-Walid bin Talil and other owners of Saudi television stations, saying they should be executed according to Islamic law.

Al-Ahmad damned MBC TV, Al-Arabiya TV, the ART and Rotana channels, saying that “all these [Saudi] channels serve to destroy Islam and the Muslims.” The Saudi professor supported Sheikh Saleh Al-Lahidan’s fatwa demanding that owners of liberal Arab TV channels be placed on trial and repent.

Al-Ahmad stated that liberal channels “spread corruption in the land” with their broadcast of “corruption and nudity”. “They should be tried in an Islamic court of law and sentenced to death. This [fatwa] is clearly in accordance with Islamic law,” said the professor.

He believed the channels to be more dangerous than the “Zionist Jews” or the “Crusader Americans in Iraq”, saying that “the deadly poison that [the channels] are spreading has reached the bone marrow.”
“Islam itself casts fear,” said Al-Ahmad. When the interviewer countered saying, “Islam is a religion of tolerance and leniency,” the professor responded: “…Islam is lenient, but the infidel West trembles in fear of it… If Allah decrees death - this is how it should be…”

Al-Ahmad called on “good” and “honorable” businessmen to contribute millions to file Islamic suits against the television channels to prosecute them legally. He also called on the people of Saudi Arabia, in the other Gulf States, in Yemen, in Egypt, and everywhere to banish the channels.