PUBLIC floggings of a freedom of speech blogger are to continue until he has been lashed 1,000 times, a court in Saudi Arabia has ruled.

Yesterday, the country’s supreme court upheld its sentence of ten years in prison, a £175,000 fine and 1,000 lashes on 31-year-old Raif Badawi.

A sentence of 15 years in prison for his lawyer and brother-in-law, Waleed Abu Al-Khair, was upheld in February.

The rulings have come in defiance of an international outcry over the sentences, which intensified in January after Badawi suffered the first 50 lashes.

Subsequent beatings were postponed after a medical report found he was not fit for the punishment, which his wife, Ensaf Haidar, believes will kill him.

On being told his sentence had been upheld she said: “I am shocked.”

Badawi was arrested in 2012 and charged with “insulting Islam through electronic channels”.

He had been running the Liberal Saudi Network, an online forum set up to debate political and religious issues.

According to Haidar, Badawi created his blog nine years ago with no other aim than to begin “peaceful” dialogue on issues surrounding secularism, liberalism, women’s rights and human rights.

In one post he wrote: “You have the right to express and think whatever you want as you have the right to declare what you think about it, it is your right to believe or think, have the right to love and to hate, from your right to be a liberal or Islamist.”

In another, he said: “What we need in the Arab and Islamic societies is more to uphold the value of the individual and uphold freedom and respect for his thinking... States which are based on a religious basis confine their people in the circle of faith and fear.”

Sentenced in 2014, two years after his arrest, Badawi suffered the first 50 lashes on January 9 this year in a public square in Jeddah in front of hundreds of people. He was handcuffed and his feet were shackled.

A video taken secretly by an onlooker and later released on the internet created an international outcry as it showed him being brutally beaten on the back and legs by a member of the security forces.

The beatings were supposed to take place every Friday but a team of doctors who assessed him after the first bout recommended that Badawi, who suffers ill-health, should be allowed to heal before being subjected to any more lashings.

Said Haidar, who was forced to flee to Canada with the couple’s three children, said: “Raif told me he is in a lot of pain after his flogging: his health is poor.”

She fears he will not survive further beatings and has called on the international community to keep up pressure on Saudi Arabia to revoke the sentence.

Some commentators believe Saudi Arabia has been taken aback by the strength of the protest, which include an open letter from 18 Nobel laureates.

Prince Charles is also believed to have raised the issue during a royal visit in February. The Prince met the new King Salman who, it was hoped, would be more moderate than his predecessor, King Abdullah, but so far has turned out to be even more conservative. A review into Badawi’s case was ordered by the regime’s rulers in March but now says it rejects any interference in its affairs.

“The kingdom cannot believe and strongly disapproves what has been addressed in some media outlets about the case of Citizen [Badawi] and the judicial sentence he has received,” said a spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It is now feared that Badawi may be retried for the crime of apostasy (the abandonment of his religious faith) which carries the death sentence. He was charged with this initially but the charge was thrown out in 2013.

However, his family believes the regime will seek to get rid of him with a retrial. If found guilty he would be beheaded.

Haidar believes only international pressure can save him.

A petition begun by Amnesty International has so far collected more than one million signatures and the organisation is behind a book – “1,000 Lashes Because I Dared to Speak Freely” – published to draw attention to the case. All of the profits will be used to help Badawi, who dictated a preface to the book during phone calls to his wife.

A day of action has also been called for June 17, the third anniversary of Badawi’s arrest, when a letter will be delivered to UK Prime Minister David Cameron at Downing Street.

The letter, signed by Baroness Glenys Kinnock among others, calls on the government to “make publicly clear your complete opposition to the human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia and demand the immediate release of Raif and Waleed as the EU Parliament has.”

The letter states that more needs to be done than simply expressing disapproval and points out that the UK has around £12 billion invested in Saudi Arabia, while Saudi investment in the UK is encouraged, particularly in the property market. Saudi investment in the UK is currently more than £62.5bn.

“Questions have to be asked about why more cannot be done to promote the human rights of citizens of a country with which there is such extensive business.

“Particularly, questions have to be asked about the morality of providing such a regime with arms, particularly the weaponry and facilities they use in their brutal penal system,” says the letter.

Canada, Germany, Norway and the United States have also called for an end to the “brutal” sentence.

Said Badawi: “All this cruel suffering happened to me only because I expressed my opinion.”