The court also prevented 37-year-old Haila Al-Qaseer from traveling abroad for 15 years after she is released. The sentence will be backdated to when she first entered custody.
The court had found Al-Qaseer guilty of declaring the state as infidel, giving refuge to wanted terrorists, instigating people to carry out terrorist attacks, and possessing two guns without license and handing them over to terrorists to attack security officers.
The defendant was also accused of financing terrorist operations and collecting more than SR1 million for the purpose. She had sent the amount to Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen. She had also contacted Al-Qaeda members in Yemen and Afghanistan.
Al-Qaseer went out of the Kingdom to join Al-Qaeda in Yemen, helping to forge documents of a terror suspect and using her rest house as a center for forging ID cards for militants who wanted to join the fighting in Iraq.
She also hid from security officers and traveled to the south of the country to give a wireless system to a courier to pass to Al-Qaeda in Yemen.
The court delivered its verdict in the presence of her lawyer and two relatives. Copies of the verdict were given to the public prosecutor, the defendant and her agent. An appeal can be filed within a month.
Informed sources told Arab News that the public prosecutor as well as the defendant’s lawyer opposed the verdict and they are likely to appeal.
Al-Qaseer was arrested in Buraidah with a number of wanted terror suspects from the same family in March 2010. She was planning to get married to Saeed Al-Shahri, Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 man in Yemen.
The criminal court has started examining the case of a Saudi preacher and university professor who is one of seven terror suspects. He was charged with conspiring against the ruler, inciting sedition and division in the country, abusing the state and its security and judicial institutions and supporting Al-Qaeda ideology.
The professor is also charged with justifying the crimes of a number of terror suspects and trying to defend them as he considered the government’s actions against them as injustice and oppression. He allegedly published articles on the Internet supporting the terror suspects and possessed books and video clips on Al-Qaeda.
He is also accused of publishing articles on the Internet how to tackle investigators and encouraged people to gather and cause chaos. He also allegedly established contact with suspicious foreign parties in order to incite violence in the Kingdom and abroad.
The prosecutor demanded the maximum penalty for the defendant on the basis of the cyber crime law. The court agreed to the defendant’s request to appoint a lawyer to respond to the charges.
