Helsinki: Sweden’s Foreign Ministry says it summoned Saudi Arabia’s charge d’affaires to protest the flogging of a blogger convicted of insulting Islam.
Ministry spokesman Jon Pelling says the diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in Stockholm was summoned Monday “to express the concern” over the conviction and public flogging of Raef Badawi.
Saudi officials on Friday postponed a second round of flogging after a doctor said Badawi’s wounds from the first 50 lashes had not yet healed.
His first flogging took place on January 9 before dozens of people in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Badawi was sentenced in May to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for criticising Saudi Arabia’s powerful clerics and ridiculing the country’s morality police on a liberal blog he founded.
