Retired Saudi teacher sentenced to death for criticizing ruling family on social media

Retired Saudi teacher Mohammed al-Ghamdi sentenced to death for posting on social media

Saudi court passes sentence Retired teacher sentenced to death for criticizing the ruling family in messages to nine of his social media followers.

Mohammed al-Ghamdi, 54, was sentenced to death on July 10 for various offenses, according to Human Rights Watch. related to his activities on YouTube and X, formerly known as Twitter. This decision could be the first death sentence for social media posts.

The charges against the retired teacher are reported to include «describe the king or the crown prince in a way that undermines religion or justice», «supporting a terrorist ideology» and spreading fake news «with the intent to commit a terrorist crime».< /p>

On Thursday, Mohammed's brother, Saeed al-Ghamdi, tweeted that his brother's sentencing could be an attempt «to spite me personally after unsuccessful attempts to bring me back to the country.» Said, an Islamic scholar, lives in self-imposed exile in London and is wanted by the Saudi Arabian authorities.

«I appeal to anyone who can help save my brother from this unfair and unfair decision,» he said. said.

Saudi Arabia has long been criticized for its frequent use of the death penalty. According to Amnesty International, the kingdom carried out 196 confirmed executions in 2022, making it the third-most executioner after China and Iran.

«Silence your critics»

Saudi Arabia has also handed down numerous sentences spanning decades. sentences for crimes related to social media posts.

Last August, a University of Leeds PhD student was sentenced to 34 years in prison when she returned home to Saudi Arabia for her summer vacation. Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old mother of two, was accused of «helping those who seek to cause social unrest and destabilize civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts.»

Mohammed al-Shehab Ghamdi has been held by Saudi security forces since last June, when he was arrested outside his home in Mecca. Human Rights Watch reports that after his arrest, he spent four months in solitary confinement and was denied access to a lawyer for more than a year.

He was tried in Saudi Arabia's controversial Specialized Criminal Court (SCC), which was set up in 2008 to deal with a backlog of terrorism cases, but has since become infamous for handing down harsh sentences to political prisoners.

In 2020, Heba Moraev, Amnesty International Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: “The Saudi government is using the SCC to create a false aura of legality around abuses of the anti-terrorism law to silence its critics. Every stage of the SCC trial is marked by human rights violations.”