A 20-Year Sentence for Tweets in Saudi Arabia

A Saudi court has sentenced Asaad al-Ghamdi, a Saudi teacher, to 20 years in prison on charges related to his peaceful social media activity. The conviction is yet another escalation in the country’s ever-worsening crackdown on freedom of expression and other basic rights. 

Al-Ghamdi is the brother of Mohammed al-Ghamdi, a retired Saudi teacher, who was sentenced to death in July 2023 based solely on his posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, and YouTube activity. He is also still in prison.  

A third brother, Saeed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, is a well-known Saudi Islamic scholar and government critic living in exile in the United Kingdom. Saudi authorities often retaliate against the family members of critics and dissidents abroad in an effort to coerce them to return to the country. 

According to sources, Saudi security forces arrested Asaad al-Ghamdi on November 20, 2022, in a nighttime raid on his home while his wife and children looked on. They confiscated electronic devices and ransacked every room of the house. He was not informed of the reasons for the arrest or the charges against him. 

The tweets used as evidence against him criticized projects related to Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s program for diversifying Saudi Arabia’s economy. One tweet mourned a leading Saudi human rights figure who died in prison following his conviction on charges relating to his peaceful activism and offered condolences to his family. 

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly criticized rampant abuses in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system, including long periods of detention without charge or trial, denial of legal assistance, and the courts’ reliance on torture-tainted confessions as the sole basis of conviction. 

The outrageous sentence handed down to Asaad al-Ghamdi following Mohammed al-Ghamdi’s death sentence and attempts to lure their brother back to Saudi Arabia are all further evidence of Saudi authorities’ willingness to crush all dissent and further their repression of critical voices.

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