Blogger Raif Badawi May Receive Second Set Of Lashes Tomorrow For Insulting Islam (Photo)

A Saudi Arabian blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes may be flogged for a second time on Friday, campaigners fear.

This week Saudi Arabia’s supreme court upheld a sentence of 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes on Raif Badawi for insulting Islam. The judgment came despite criticism from the United Nations, United States, European Union, Canada and others, guardian reports.

In January Badawi received the first of 20 sets of 50 lashes. The punishment was ordered to be spread over 20 weeks and carried out on Fridays outside a mosque in the Red Sea City of Jeddah, but subsequent rounds of lashes were postponed on medical grounds.

Human Rights Watch said it believed that a second round of flogging would take place on Friday, following the new court decision.

Badawi co-founded the Saudi Liberal Network internet discussion group, which encouraged online debate about religious and political issues, in 2008. He was arrested in June 2012 under cybercrime provisions and sentenced last May.

A spokesperson for the Foreign Office in London said this week: “We are extremely concerned that Raif Badawi’s sentence has been upheld … We have raised his case at the most senior levels in the government of Saudi Arabia and will continue to do so.”

Saudi Arabia has dismissed criticism of its flogging of Badawi and “strongly denounced the media campaign around the case”.