Saudi Arabia activist sentenced to 11 years for 'support' of women's rights

I agree. The US has way too many terrible allies we should never be supporting. After they hacksawed the journalist who was living in exile in America and working for the Washington Post (whose children are American citizens), that was the US' chance to cut ties and once it passed, I started to think they'll probably never cut ties...

Weren't they protests at Universities a few years ago against either UAE or SA in the US? I think they asked for universities to stop investing in Saudi Arabia, it lasted like a week, the Universities said "OK", and that was it?

Not only the US - the same chorus is missing in Europe

It's true, they execute people for their Tweets[1] and for saying anything sort of close to "the people should rule instead of the King"

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/saudi-arabia-...

Unfortunately I think they are succeeding in diversifying their economy away from oil, and amongst businessmen these criminals are readily accepted.

I also lived there and was under the impression that a lot of people slated for execution for crimes against a specific person very often tended to get pardoned / execution stayed by the victim or their surviving family. There was a widespread belief rooted in Islam that pardoning someone sentenced to death was equivalent to saving their life, and this would help assure that the benevolent family members would be accepted into heaven.

I think it's harder to get your execution if your crime is against the state, because there's no one who would benefit in the afterlife from commuting your sentence. (I assume that anyone in power who could has plenty of other subjects to grant leniency to, and don't have any particular religious pressure to take advantage of any individual opportunity to do so.)