Saudi Arabia has sentenced a teacher to 20 years in prison for critical social media posts, Human Rights Watch and the convicted man’s brother reported on Tuesday.
According to HRW, Asaad al-Ghamdi, 47, was arrested in November 2022 in a night-time raid at his home in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
The New York-based human rights group reported he was convicted on May 29 by Saudi Arabia’s Special Criminal Court, set up in 2008 to prosecute suspects accused of terrorism.
HRW said he was “sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges related to his peaceful social media activity”, calling it “yet another escalation in the country’s ever-worsening crackdown on freedom of expression”.
Court documents reviewed by HRW showed that Ghamdi was accused of “challenging the religion and justice of the King and Crown Prince” and “publishing false and malicious news and rumours.”
According to HRW, the posts used as evidence against him criticised projects related to the Vision 2030 reform agenda.
One post mourned the death of Abdullah al-Hamid, a prominent Saudi human rights activist who died in prison following his conviction on charges related to his activist work.
Ghamdi faces the same charges as his brother Mohammed, a government critic who has denounced alleged corruption and human rights abuses on social media.
Mohammed was sentenced to death last year based on his activities on social media.
His third brother Saeed, an Islamic scholar and government critic living in exile in the United Kingdom, condemned the latest move by Saudi authorities.
“These charges are arbitrary and unjust because they are all based on tweets,” Saeed told AFP, commenting on the verdict against Assad.
“I might be the target,” he said.
Over the past two years, the Saudi judiciary has convicted dozens of individuals for social media posts and handed down lengthy prison sentences, according to rights groups.
These include Nourah al-Qahtani, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2022, mainly for social media posts critical of the government
Salma al-Shabab, a member of the Sunni-ruled state’s Shia minority, was sentenced to 34 years in prison in 2022 for aiding dissidents trying to “disrupt public order” in the kingdom by circulating her tweets.
Manahel al-Otaibi, a 29-year-old blogger and fitness instructor, was arrested in November 2022 for challenging Saudi male guardianship laws and requirements for women to wear the traditional body-covering abaya garment.
The Special Criminal Court sentenced him to 11 years in prison on January 9, but the sentence was only made public later in a document submitted by Saudi Arabia to the UN special rapporteurs investigating the case.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)