A Saudi cartoonist who once drew for a Qatari newspaper when a long-running diplomatic crisis erupted in Doha has been sentenced to 23 years in prison, the Associated Press reported, citing its activist sources. 

Al-Ghamdi, a cartoonist, drew under the pseudonym Al-Hazza, and some of his cartoons mocked problems during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and also sometimes touched on Middle East politics.

Al-Ghamdi was working at the Qatari newspaper Lusail when the long-running diplomatic boycott of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain began in 2017.

It initially led the Saudi Specialized Criminal Court to sentence al-Ghamdi to six years in prison on charges rejected by the cartoonist, including that his work allegedly insulted the kingdom. But the case was reopened in recent months and al-Ghamdi received an unappealable 23-year sentence, according to SANAD, a United Kingdom-based human rights organization specializing in Saudi Arabia.