Saudi University Professor Sentenced to Death for Using Social Media Apps to Share News

The Guardian newspaper reported on Sunday that Awad al-Qarni, a Saudi Arabian professor of law who supports change, had been found guilty.

Nasser, Qarni's son who left the country last year and is now residing in the UK, gave the British daily information on the accusations made against his father.

Dissidents said that Qarni, a 65-year-old scholar with a sizable social media following, including two million Twitter followers, was an influential and well-respected intellectual. Qarni was arrested in September 2017 and was referred to in Saudi-controlled media as a "dangerous preacher."

The charges against Qarni, for which he is facing the death penalty, included the law professor’s “admission” that he used a social media account under his own name (@awadalqarni) and used it “at every opportunity … to express his opinions.”

The court documents also claimed that Qarni “admitted” participating in a WhatsApp chat, and was accused of participating in videos in which he praised Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Qarni’s use of Telegram and creation of a Telegram account was also included in the allegations.

The ruling against the Saudi professor comes as human rights advocates and Saudi activists have warned that authorities in Riyadh are engaged in a severe crackdown on individuals who are perceived to be critics of the Saudi regime as the use of social media and other communications has been criminalized inside the kingdom since the beginning of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reign in 2017.

Last year, Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds Ph.D. student and mother of two, received a 34-year sentence for having a Twitter account and for following and retweeting dissidents and activists. Another woman, Noura al-Qahtani, was sentenced to 45 years in prison for using Twitter.

The Saudi regime is also accused of ordering the 2018 brutal murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a US-Saudi citizen, who used to be a vocal critic of the Saudi royalty. Khashoggi was dismembered during a visit to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

This is while the Saudi kingdom and state-controlled investors have recently increased their financial stake in US social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, in what is viewed as Riyadh’s attempts to project an international image of technology, modern infrastructure, sport, and entertainment so as to whitewash its long list of rights abuse records.

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, has also increased its stake in Facebook and Meta, the company that owns Facebook and WhatsApp.

Since bin Salman assumed the role of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler in 2017, the country has detained hundreds of activists, bloggers, academics, and other political dissidents. This is despite the fact that the crackdown has drawn criticism from throughout the world.

As long as the government of the monarchy continues to forbid freedom of expression, association, and belief, Muslim academics will be put to death and activists for women's rights will be imprisoned and tortured.

Riyadh has also rewritten its anti-terrorism laws to specifically target activism over the past few years.