Jailed Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi was due to receive 50 more lashes today — the second of 20 rounds, in his sentence of 1,000 lashes, ten years in prison, and a 1 million riyal ($267,000) fine for “insulting Islam” — but the punishment reportedly has been postponed on medical grounds. Via Amnesty International:

Amnesty International has received information indicating that the flogging of Raif Badawi has not been carried out today on medical grounds.
Raif Badawi was removed from his jail cell this morning and taken to the prison clinic for a medical check-up before his sentence was due to be carried out. The doctor concluded that the wounds had not yet healed properly and that he would not be able to withstand another round of lashes at this time. He recommended that the flogging should be postponed until next week. It is unclear whether the authorities will fully comply with this demand.
“​Not only does this postponement on health grounds expose the utter brutality of this punishment, it underlines its outrageous inhumanity. The notion that Raif Badawi must be allowed to heal so that he can suffer this cruel punishment again and again is macabre and outrageous. Flogging should not be carried out under any circumstances,” said Said Boumedouha, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Programme.

It is worth nothing that, if this is true, it would seem not to square with the cell phone video footage, released last week, purportedly showing Badawi being lashed in public near the al-Jalafi mosque in the city of Jeddah.

Badawi’s case has prompted an international outcry among human rights organizations and governments, which have called for his release. I wrote earlier this week about Badawi, and about the unpleasant history of the whipping-post.