Hawzah News Agency - (Riyadh - Saudi Arabia) - A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced Shia cleric and human rights activist Sheikh Mohammed al-Habib to 12 years in prison and imposed a travel ban on him, as the Riyadh regime presses ahead with its heavy-handed crackdown on members of the religious community.

The rights group Prisoners of Conscience, which is an independent non-governmental organization advocating human rights in Saudi Arabia, announced in a post on its official Twitter page on Thursday that the Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh had passed the ruling on the clergyman and prevented him from traveling abroad for five years.

Sheikh Habib was recently released after three years of arbitrary detention.

On July 29, the same Saudi court sentenced an anti-regime activist from the kingdom’s oil-rich and Shia-populated Eastern Province to death.

London-based and Arabic-language Nabaa television news network reported at the time that the Riyadh-based tribunal found Ali Al Rabie guilty in a “sham hearing” that fell short of international fair trial standards.

Saudi authorities had also executed two of Ali’s brothers, Ahmad and Hossein, on April 23 over their political activism.