Raif Badawi underwent the first of what were supposed to be 20 weekly flogging sessions of 50 lashes each on January 9 in the Red Sea city of Jiddah.
Two subsequent planned floggings were postponed after doctors in the kingdom examined the 31-year-old and determined he should not face the punishment as scheduled.
Amnesty spokeswoman Sara Hashash said that the London-based rights group had been informed that today’s planned flogging also did not happen, though it was unclear why. Mr Badawi was not medically examined this week as happened previously, she said.
Had it gone ahead, the flogging would have been Mr Badawi’s first since Saudi Arabia’s new monarch, King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, ascended to the throne following the death of his half-brother, King Abdullah.
Amnesty has followed Mr Badawi’s case closely and is campaigning for his release. Saudi authorities have faced many international appeals to rescind the punishment, including from the US State Department and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
President Barack Obama met with King Salman earlier this week. He raised the issue of human rights broadly but did not specifically discuss Mr Badawi’s case.
Mr Badawi was arrested in 2012 after writing articles critical of Saudi Arabia’s clerics on a liberal blog he created. He was found guilty of breaking Saudi Arabia’s technology laws and insulting Islamic religious figures through the site. His blog since has been shut down.
Mr Badawi was originally sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes in 2013, but an appeals judge stiffened the punishment to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes. He was also fined one million Saudi riyals, or roughly 266,000 US dollars.
Mr Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, and three children now live in Canada.
She joined politicians in Ottawa yesterday in urging prime minister Stephen Harper to intervene personally on her husband’s behalf.
