People get death sentences over tweets???

I don’t know what you guys think, but it is absolutely ridiculous for me to see this happening. And made me realized personal privacy & nyms are important

And what’s shocking is, this is not the first case that has ever happened in Saudi:

1/ Shehab’s 34-year prison sentence, plus a 34-year travel ban over retweets in support of women’s right.

2/ Nourah al-Qahtani, a mother of five, was sentenced to 45 years in prison over tweets from two anonymous accounts.

3/ A dual Saudi-American citizen, who was sentenced to 16 years over his tweets.

4/ Abdullah Jelan, a university graduate who dreamed of becoming a health educator for the Saudi government, was handed 10 years in prison, plus a 10-year travel ban, over anonymous tweets that largely focused on unemployment.

5/ Sisters and well-known social media influencers, Manahel and Fouz al-Otaibi, were facing criminal charges over their social media activity, including tweeting about feminist causes.

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otter, 9 months ago

The recent case

npr.org/…/saudi-arabia-man-death-sentence-tweets

Things I found relevant

Alghamdi, a father of seven living in Mecca, had gained just 10 followers between the two anonymous accounts he ran on X. According to Human Rights Watch, he used the social media site to rail against alleged government corruption, but was mostly resharing posts by more popular government critics.

The account was absolutely tiny

What prosecutors often argue in these cases is that insulting or criticizing Saudi Arabia’s leadership poses a threat to national security and can destabilize society. Many of these trials happen behind closed doors.

The very weak justification. Personally, I feel like executing someone over an account with 10 followers is what will make me doubt an administration’s competence.

Alghamdi’s brother, Saeed Alghamdi, believes the case against his younger brother is actually meant to target him. Saeed Alghamdi is a well-known Islamic scholar connected to many of the kingdom’s most prominent jailed critics. He left Saudi Arabia in 2013 and founded the Saudi rights group, SANAD. He now lives in exile in the United Kingdom.

He said Saudi authorities have tried to convince him to go back to the kingdom, promising money and a good life if he returns and stops his activism abroad.

So the real reason might have nothing to do with Twitter posts, but rather to spite the man’s older brother for running a human rights group.

How they got the info is unknown:

It’s unclear how Saudi authorities were able to verify Alghamdi’s identity on X.

In other cases, it appears the identity of Saudi users may have been leaked, exposing them to arrest and long prison sentences. An FBI complaint and federal investigation in the United States led to the conviction last year of a former Twitter employee found guilty of failing to register as an agent for Saudi Arabia. He was also convicted of taking bribes in exchange for passing along the confidential user data of Saudi government critics.

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