HUMAN rights campaigners have stepped up their calls for Saudi Arabia to halt the public flogging of a blogger sentenced for "insulting Islam".
Raif Badawi, who has this week been given the Scottish Secular Society's first Aikenhead award for commitment to secular values, is expected to begin his punishment today, with 50 lashes being administered followed by another 950 over the next six months.
Today's sentence is expected to be handed out after Friday prayers outside the Al-Juffali mosque in Jeddah.
Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa director for Amnesty International, said: "Flogging and other forms of corporal punishment are prohibited under international law, which prohibits torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
"It is horrifying to think that such a vicious and cruel punishment should be imposed on someone who is guilty of nothing more than daring to create a public forum for discussion and peacefully exercising the right to freedom of expression."
Mr Badawi was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes and ordered to pay a fine of one million riyals (£133,000) for "insulting Islam".
He was the co-founder of a website called the Liberal Saudi Network, now closed.
His wife Ensaf Haidar, who is living in exile in Canda with their three children, said: "The lashing order says Raif should 'be lashed severely'."
This week she accepted the Scottish Secular Society's (SSS) new award, which was named after Thomas Aikenhead, an Edinburgh University student who in 1697 became the last person to be executed in Britain for blasphemy.
Garry Otton, secretary and founder of the SSS said yesterday: "It was 318 years ago a 20-year-old student was hanged in Leith for expressing opinions the Kirk didn't like. It is beyond belief that we should be trying to defend a man for a similar offence today.
"It is both barbaric and medieval, yet Orwellian and darkly futuristic at the same time that he should have to endure 1,000 lashes for expressing 'liberal thoughts' and sharing those opinions on a website. Saudi Arabia must hang its own head in shame."
The Saudi Arabian Embassy in London has declined to comment.
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