Canada to Press the Case of Human Rights Blogger Raif Badawi with Saudi Arabia

Canada’s new foreign affairs minister is raising fresh concerns about two human rights advocates jailed in a Saudi Arabian prison who have begun hunger strikes, among them Raif Badawi, whose wife and three children live in Canada.

Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne, speaking after attending an international human rights conference in Berlin and travelling to Egypt this week, told reporters he intends to raise Badawi’s case with his Saudi Arabian counterpart in the next two weeks.

“Obviously we are all very concerned about this recent development,” Champagne told reporters Thursday. Canada considered the conditions of lawyer Walid Abu Al-Khair the lawyer of the activist and blogger Badawi, as the most brutal.

In a statement, Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister and international legal counsel to Abulkhair and the Badawi family, said Abulkhair had been subjected to “the most cruel and inhumane prison conditions, including repeated beatings, torture in detention, while being denied access to food, required medication, family visits, and lawyer visits, and which triggered Mr. Abulkhair to launch a hunger strike.”

On Friday the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom called for clemency and Badawi’s immediate release.