THE jail sentences dealt by a Saudi judge to two of the kingdom’s most prominent rights activists on March 9th came as little surprise. The two men, Abdullah al Hamid and Muhammad al Qahtani, were well aware that their outspoken criticism of the Saudi authorities and championing of the rights of political prisoners would sooner or later provoke a backlash.

Three other members of the group that they co-founded in 2009, the Association for Civil and Political Rights (known as ACPRA), are already serving prison sentences. Mr Hamid, 62, has himself been jailed more than once for demanding that the country should evolve into a constitutional monarchy. Mr Qahtani, 46, teaches economics at Riyadh’s prestigious Diplomatic Institute, and has been a pugnacious defender of civil liberties for more than a decade. Like other Saudi would-be-reformers they have both long been subjected to travel bans and other forms of petty persecution.

Yet the case has held some surprises. For one thing, their seven-month-long trial has been held in public, and closely followed by thousands of Saudis via Twitter. As a result, the court’s proceedings have roused unprecedented controversy. Few Saudis had been aware, for example, that to argue publicly that elected representatives, rather than religious scholars, should be entrusted with applying laws, as the two men did, could be considered a criminal offence. Mingling with foreigners and supplying them with "false information" were suspicious activities, too, according to the judge.

It was also striking that in his final ruling, the judge likened ACPRA to Al Qaeda. Like Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist gang, he said, the rights group actively advocated disobedience to the kingdom’s rightful ruler, and cast doubt on the integrity of its highest religious authorities. The only difference between the two groups, argued the judge, was that Al Qaeda preached violence and ACPRA did not.

In the end, the judge convicted the two men on 12 counts. The sentences—10 years for Mr Qahtani, and 11 for Mr Hamid (which include six from a previous conviction that had been waived via a royal pardon, now revoked), plus travel bans following their release, were unusually harsh for such a high-profile case. Both men have appealed. Their lawyer has mounted a separate protest at the court’s decision to hold them in custody before the appeal is heard.

Yet despite the deepened gloom in the kingdom’s small, hard-pressed community of liberal reformers, there are some signs of light. Al Watan, a local daily, reports that a ministerial committee is considering changes to the way the death penalty is applied, from public beheading by sword to execution by firing squad. The few officially sanctioned swordsmen are having trouble commuting from one execution to another fast enough.