Story highlights Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was convicted of "insulting Islam" and other charges in 2014 
 
 He was sentenced 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes 
 
 Badawi received the first 50 lashes in January, and his wife says they are set to resume soon 
 
 (CNN) A Saudi blogger convicted of "insulting Islam" is expected to receive the second 50 lashes of a 1,000-lash sentence soon, his wife says. 
 
 Blogger Raif Badawi has been behind bars since 2012 for his online posts and running a blog called "Saudi Arabian Liberals," where he hosted political and religious debate and advocated secularism in a highly religious society. 
 
 His wife, Ensaf Haidar, has said Badawi created the forum in 2008 in an effort to encourage discussion about faith. 
 
 The lashings are to be carried out 50 lashes at a time, 20 weeks in a row. Badawi received the first flogging in January 2015, but since then, the punishment has been pushed back several times. ||||| Saudi Arabia is to resume the flogging of Raif Badawi, the blogger whose first 50 lashes became the centre of an international outcry, his wife says she has been told. 
 
 Ensaf Haidar, who is now living in Canada with the couple’s children, said the same “informed source” who originally tipped her off to the flogging of her husband in January had told her the punishment was about to resume. 
 
 If the statement is true, it will be a snub to Britain, which privately and publicly has intervened in the case, and especially the Prince of Wales, regarded as one of the kingdom’s “oldest friends”, who raised Mr Badawi’s case personally with King Salman on a visit in February. 
 
 It may also be a response to the government's decision to drop a contract with the Saudi prison system worth £5.9 million, believed to have been taken in protest at Saudi Arabia's human rights record. 
 
 The flogging, which was suspended after the first 50 of 1,000 lashes were administered for health reasons, has not been resumed since. 
 
 “I was informed by an informed source, that the Saudi authorities have given the green light to the resumption of Raif Badawi’s flogging,” Mrs Haidar said, in a statement on a website set up in honour of her husband. 
 
 “The informed source also said that the flogging will resume soon but will be administered inside the prison.” 
 
 Mr Badawi was a liberal who was part of a brief flowering of dissent and political debate in the kingdom in the last decade. 
 
 That came to an abrupt halt with the Arab Spring, when liberals were seen as more of a threat to ruling regimes around the region rather than as a bulwark against hardline Islamism. 
 
 Mr Badawi, who ran a blog and wrote articles in particular criticising the country’s religious establishment, was arrested in May 2012 and sentenced in May last year to ten years in prison, a 10-year travel ban, and a ban on appearing on media outlets, as well as the 1,000 lashes. 
 
 The first 50 of the lashes were administered in a public square in Jeddah in January, and prompted international concern. The UN commissioner for human rights, Prince Zeid Al-Hussein, called the sentence “cruel and inhuman punishment”, while key Saudi allies Britain and America also issued statements of concern. 
 
 After the Prince of Wales’s intervention, it was hinted to journalists that King Salman may have used his ruler’s prerogative to intervene to suspend the flogging. 
 
 Photo: EPA 
 
 However, since then, relations between Britain and Saudi Arabia have soured. 
 
 Earlier this month, Michael Gove, the justice secretary, announced he was cancelling a contract to provide training to the Saudi prisons system, in theory part of its reform process. 
 
 Although no reason was given, it was widely held to be a response to a campaign in another prominent human rights case, that of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, a Saudi Shia sentenced to death by beheading and crucifixion for taking part in protests when he was just 17, in 2012. That campaign was led by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader. 
 
 In Monday’s Daily Telegraph, the Saudi ambassador to London reacted with fury to the suspension, accusing Mr Corbyn of “breaching respect” and demanding that issues of internal policies and trade be kept separate. 
 
 The resumption of Mr Badawi’s flogging may be a response to that campaign. 
 
 Mrs Haidar added: “I do not understand this decision especially as Raif’s case is still being reviewed by the supreme court according to a senior source in the Saudi Ministry of Justice and according to the statement of UK Foreign Office minister, Tobias Ellwood, who told the House of Commons in July that my husband’s case was still being examined by Saudi judges.” 
 
 She has warned that Mr Badawi may not be physically strong enough to bear the full punishment, even if as planned it is spread out over 20 weeks. 
 
 “I call on his Majesty King Salman to gracefully end my husband’s ordeal and to pardon him,” she added. “I also appeal to his Majesty to allow him to be deported to Canada to be reunited with his family and children, who have been deprived of their father for more than four years.” 
 
 There was no immediate response from either the Saudi Arabian embassy or the ministry of the interior. ||||| Here's everything you need to know about him. 
 
 He was convicted for insulting Islam 
 
 The 31-year-old Saudi Arabian writer and creator of secularist website Free Saudi Liberals was originally arrested for insulting Islam and showing disobedience in 2012, and was brought to court for several charges including apostasy. Badawi avoided the death penalty as a high court threw out the apostasy charge in 2013. 
 
 Raif Badawi has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes for ‘insulting Islam’ on his liberal website 
 
 Could face beheading 
 
 However, his family say that they have learned of judicial attempts to have Badawi retried for apostasy, and that he could be beheaded for renouncing his religion. Human rights watchdogs have not yet been able to verify the claims. 
 
 He has 950 more lashes to endure 
 
 Badawi received his first set of lashes after Friday prayers on 9 January outside the Al-Juffali mosque in Jeddah. He was due to receive 50 lashes every Friday for the following 19 weeks, but the punishment was suspended on medical grounds. As Amnesty International put it, the punishment was "postponed - to let Raif heal enough to suffer again." 
 
 A team of eight doctors carried out tests on Badawi, and believe the wounds he suffered from the first set of lashes haven't healed sufficiently for him to go through the next 19 sets of lashes. 
 
 On top of the lashes and a 10-year jail term, Badawi has been ordered to pay a fine of 1million riyals (£175,000). 
 
 Badawi's father reportedly spoke out against him 
 
 Part of the punishment, which has been enforced at a time when the debate about Islam and freedom of speech continues to rage, was in part down to "parental disobedience". It is a crime to disobey your father in Saudi Arabia, and Badawi's father reportedly went on TV to renounce his son. 
 
 More pressure is needed, says his wife 
 
 His wife, Ensaf Haidar, who Raif married in 2002, has been the victim of anonymous threats. She said: "Two or three days after Raif's hearing, I started to receive phone calls from unknown people, saying 'we are going to kill your husband'. But I didn't respond to them." 
 
 Haidar has claimed political asylum in Montreal, Canada, along with their three children, Terad, Najwa and Miriam, but has been able to speak to her husband while he's in prison. "Raif told me he is in a lot of pain after his flogging, his health is poor," she told Amnesty International. "I told our children about the news last week so that they would not find out about it from friends at school. It is a huge shock for them. International pressure is crucial; I believe if we keep up the support it will eventually pay off." 
 
 Influence of new monarch 
 
 After the death of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in January, commentators wondered what, if any, impact the change of power would have on Badawi's case. King Salman ascended the throne promising continuity, but he's much more conservative than his predecessor, who pushed through some very limited reforms. 
 
 Royal pressure 
 
 On his state visit to visit the new Saudi king in early February, Prince Charles is believed to have raised Badawi's case. A source said that "the reaction from the king was not unfriendly". But as nothing's changed in the last month, campaigners have speculated that King Salman wasn't friendly to the idea of freeing Badawi either. 
 
 Saudi Arabia has not listened so far 
 
 Other international pressure hasn't had any effecteither. Canada, Germany, Norway and the United States have called for an end to the "brutal" sentence. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the US was "greatly concerned" by reports of the punishment. 
 
 Psaki said: "The United States government calls on Saudi authorities to cancel this brutal punishment and to review Badawi's case and sentence." 
 
 Ensaf Haidar, centre, wife of the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, holds a vigil in Montreal, Quebec, urging Saudi Arabia to free her husband 
 
 Badawi's writing is incredibly poignant 
 
 Until the website was shut down by Saudi Authorities, Free Saudi Liberals was a forum, as well as a place for Badawi to record his musings. In one post, he writes: "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 post, Badawi used the Israeli occupation of Palestine as a springboard into looking at what he believed was the problematic idea of founding a nation on religion. He wrote: "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." 
 
 The timing of the flogging has linked it to Charlie Hebdo 
 
 The timing of the punishments has been criticised. At the Paris rally for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January, one woman held a sign reading: "I am Raif Badawi, the Saudi journalist who was flogged" in an echo of the #JeSuisCharlie slogan. 
 
 Amnesty has campaigned ferociously to release Badawi. 
 
 Philip Luther, Amnesty’s Middle East and north Africa director said: "It is horrifying to think that such a vicious and cruel punishment should be imposed on someone who is guilty of nothing more than daring to create a public forum for discussion and peacefully exercising the right to freedom of expression." 
 
 This article was originally published on 15 January 2015. It was updated on 2 March 2015.
– Whippings could soon resume for a blogger in Saudi Arabia sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam," CNN reports. Raif Badawi, who advocated for secularism on his blog Saudi Arabian Liberals, has been in prison since 2012 and received the first 50 of his scheduled weekly lashes in January 2015. According to the Telegraph, an international outcry arose after the initial floggings, and the second round was delayed while Badawi healed. Now, his wife Ensaf Haidar says a trusted source told her those next 50 lashes have been approved by authorities and could happen any day. “I call on his Majesty King Salman to gracefully end my husband’s ordeal and to pardon him,” she says. She is hoping Badawi will instead be deported to Canada, where she and their children have been living.