Samar bint Muhammad Badawi[2] (Arabic: سمر بدوي; born 28 June 1981)[1][7] is a Saudi Arabian human rights activist.
[1] In July 2010, Jeddah General Court ruled in Samar Badawi's favor, and she was released on 25 October 2010,[10] and her guardianship was transferred to an uncle.
[11] In November 2011, she and Manal al-Sharif filed charges in the Grievances Board against the Saudi Arabian General Directorate of Traffic for rejecting their applications for drivers' licences.
A non-judicial investigation by the Protection Home stated that "Badawi's father had beaten and verbally abused her, used drugs, had 14 wives, had exhausted his financial resources, had repeatedly changed jobs, and became friendly with a 'bad group of people.
[10] On 18 July 2010, Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud, governor of Makkah Province, proposed creating a committee to "reconcile father and daughter by making him promise not to use violence against her, to allow her to marry, and not to file spurious lawsuits [that] he could not prove.
[1] On 18 October 2010, the Supreme Judicial Council of Saudi Arabia told Badawi's lawyer Abu al-Khair that it would investigate the legality of both cases.
She filed a lawsuit in the Grievances Board, a non-Sharia court,[16] against the Ministry of Municipal and Rural affairs, because of the refusal of voter registration centres to register her for the September 2011 Saudi Arabian municipal elections, claiming that there was no law banning women as voters or candidates and that the refusal was illegal.
"[11] On 4 February, following Manal al-Sharif's November 2011 filing of charges in the Eastern Province Grievances Board against the General Directorate of Traffic for the rejection of her application for a driver's licences,[4][8][12] Badawi filed similar charges for the rejection of her own application for a driving licence.
Her presentation centered on the situation of human rights advocates in Saudi Arabia, and the detention of her husband activist Waleed Abulkhair.
On 20 September 2014, Badawi flew to the US, where she met US Senators and secretaries of several human rights organizations to discuss the issue of her husband Waleed Abulkhair and other detainees.
At that time, Badawi said she received a direct threat from the secretary of the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia that she must stop her human rights activities otherwise action would be taken against her.
On 2 December 2014, Badawi went to King Abdulaziz International Airport, to leave Saudi Arabia for a flight to Brussels, Belgium, to participate in the 16th European Union (EU) NGOs Forum on Human Rights.
[19] In a press release 12 January 2016, Amnesty International announced[20] that Samar Badawi had been arrested and taken with her 2-year-old daughter Joud to a police station in Jeddah where she was interrogated.
[21] On 13 January, The Guardian quoted "activists" as saying Samar Badawi had been "freed on bail after being arrested and held briefly" at the Dhahban prison.
[22] Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Program called Badawi's arrest, "...yet another alarming setback to human rights in Saudi Arabia [demonstrating] the extreme lengths to which the authorities are prepared to go in their relentless campaign to harass and intimidate human rights defenders into silent submission.
[26] According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Samar Badawi, along with Nassima al-Sadah, were arrested by Saudi authorities on 30 July.