DUBAI – Three young Saudi men who faced death sentences for acts they were accused of committing as minors have been handed a 10-year prison sentence instead, the Saudi Human Rights Commission said.
Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoun and Abdullah al-Zaher, youth from Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority, were detained separately on charges stemming from their participation in anti-government Shiite protests over discrimination that rocked the country’s eastern province in 2011-2012.
Al-Nimr, the nephew of prominent opposition cleric Shiekh Nimr al-Nimr, whose execution sparked Shiite demonstrations from Bahrain to Pakistan, was arrested in 2012 at age 17, according to Human Rights Watch.