RIYADH: Saudi Arabia Thursday condemned foreign criticism of a 1,000-lash sentence that the kingdom’s highest court upheld against a blogger, rejecting “interference” in its internal affairs.

The kingdom “has expressed strong disbelief and condemnation” at statements about the case of Raif Badawi, the Saudi Press Agency said, citing an official source at the Foreign Ministry.

Rights groups fear he could be flogged again as soon as Friday, despite appeals from the United States, European Union and France for his sentence to be rescinded.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom Tuesday accused Saudi Arabia of handing Badawi a “medieval” punishment.

Saudi Arabia’s judiciary “enjoys independence and the kingdom does not accept any interference in its judiciary and internal affairs from any party,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry source said.

Worldwide outrage followed a lower court’s decision sentencing Badawi to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in jail for insulting Islam.

But Badawi’s wife said last Sunday that the kingdom’s supreme court had upheld that verdict.

“This is a final decision that is irrevocable,” Ensaf Haidar told AFP in a telephone interview from Canada, where she and the couple’s three children have been granted asylum. “This decision has shocked me.”

Badawi received the first 50 lashes outside a mosque in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Jan. 9.

Subsequent rounds of punishment were postponed.

Badawi co-founded the Saudi Liberal Network Internet discussion group. He was arrested in June 2012 under cybercrime provisions and a judge ordered the website shut after it criticized Saudi Arabia’s religious police.

Badawi’s lawyer, Walid Abulkhair, who is also a rights activist, is behind bars as well.

Badawi and Abulkhair have been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize by Norwegian member of parliament Karin Andersen.

In his first letter from prison published by the German weekly Der Spiegel that month, Badawi wrote how he “miraculously survived 50 lashes.” Badawi, 31, recalled that he was “surrounded by a cheering crowd who cried incessantly ‘Allahu Akbar’”during the whipping.