Campaigners have welcomed the release of a Saudi PhD student at Leeds University who was sentenced to 34 years in prison for posting tweets in support of women’s rights.

Salma al-Shehab, 36, is understood to have left the prison in Saudi Arabia where she was being held and has been reunited with her two young children.

“It is fantastic news,” said Lina al-Hathloul, head of monitoring and advocacy at the Europe-based Saudi rights group ALQST. “She has not seen her children during her whole four years of imprisonment.”

Al-Shehab was arrested while on holiday in Saudi Arabia in January 2021. Campaigners say she was kept in solitary confinement for more than nine months before she was brought before Saudi Arabia’s specialised criminal court.

She was initially sentenced to serve three years in prison for the “crime” of using a website to “cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security”.

An appeals court later handed down the new sentence – 34 years in prison followed by a 34-year travel ban – after a public prosecutor asked the court to consider other alleged crimes.

The additional charges included the allegation that al-Shehab was “assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts” and by retweeting their tweets.

Amnesty International said her “crime” was no more than “posting tweets in support of women’s rights”.

Last March an open letter was signed by more than 300 academics, students and employees at Leeds University calling for al-Shehab’s immediate release. It said she had been jailed “on the basis of peaceful tweets”.

Al-Hathloul said al-Shehab had had a hard time in prison. “It has been difficult for her,” she said. “Not seeing her kids, not knowing whether she could complete her PhD. She was originally sentenced to six years, then it was increased to 34 years and then it was reduced to 27 years and then 4 years. It has been a nightmare really not to even be able to trust the judiciary and its decisions

“She is very strong. Salma is a very brave woman. She went on hunger strike to complain about the conditions.”

In June 2023 the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) found her detention to be arbitrary and called for her immediate release.

Al-Hathhoul said al-Shehab was not an exception. “She is symbolic of a pattern. She was released because of this pressure but many more others still remain in prison for the same charges.”

The battle now was to get al-Shehab’s travel ban lifted so she could return to Leeds where she is a dental student, al-Hathhoul said.

“She has a PhD to pursue. She is one of the most brilliant people in her field.”

Al-Hathloul, whose sister was imprisoned for campaigning for women’s rights, said her own family in Saudi Arabia were the subject of a travel ban and it was about “making sure everyone lives in constant fear. I can’t really explain to you how much of a weight it is to have this travel ban. It is a constant threat of potential arrest. It is unbearable really, it is very heavy”.

Al-Hathloul said at some point while al-Shaheb was in prison, her husband divorced her. “We don’t know all the circumstances around this but it seems like it’s a pattern … women having divorces filed against them and not being informed of it.

“It means she is being released under very sad circumstances but it is better than being in prison for 34 years.”

Brian Tronic of the US NGO Freedom House described al-Shehab’s case as a “grave miscarriage of justice” and echoed calls for the travel ban to be lifted.

“Al-Shehab’s unjust and arbitrary punishment is emblematic of a fundamentally broken Saudi justice system, where trials are not fair, defendants have alarmingly few rights, and allegations of torture and abuse by police and prison officials are commonplace,” he said.

Amnesty International’s Middle East researcher, Dana Ahmed, said al-Shehab had been in jail “just because she tweeted in support of women’s rights and retweeted Saudi women’s rights activists.”

Saudi Arabia did not immediately acknowledge her release. The Saudi embassy in London has been approached for comment.

The Foreign Office said it was monitoring the situation and would continue “to raise issues relating to freedom of speech and human rights all over the world”.

Al-Shehab is a member of Saudi Arabia’s Shia Muslim minority, which has long complained of systemic discrimination in the Sunni-ruled kingdom.