(Beirut) – Saudi Arabia is hosting a major United Nations conference on internet governance while dozens of people remain imprisoned for peaceful online speech, Human Rights Watch said today. Many are charged under the country’s abusive counterterrorism law, and the authorities conduct invasive surveillance of civil society members at home and abroad.
The 19th annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will be held from December 15 to 19 in Riyadh, under the theme of “Building our Multistakeholder Digital Future.” The annual forum features multistakeholder policy dialogue on internet-related public policy issues.
“Saudi authorities have engaged in a sustained assault on online freedom of expression, yet are now playing hosts to a global internet conference,” said Joey Shea, Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “If the Saudi government is indeed serious about digital rights, the authorities should immediately release the scores of activists imprisoned for online freedom of expression.”
For the past several years, Saudi authorities have sentenced dozens of people to egregiously long prison terms using the country’s counterterrorism law on the basis of social posts, reposts, and mere “likes” of other posts. Saudi authorities have arrested at least 40 people related to their peaceful online expression since 2021, based on reporting by Human Rights Watch, as well as Saudi rights groups such as ALQST and SANAD. This estimate most likely falls far below the true number of cases, given family members’ fear of reprisals and the severe risks involved in communicating with rights groups.
In 2022 a Saudi appeals court sentenced Salma al-Shehab, a Saudi doctoral student studying at the University of Leeds, to 34 years in prison based solely on her X activity. The sentence was reduced to 27 years, followed by a 27-year travel ban, in January 2023. Court documents reviewed by Human Rights Watch indicate that al-Shehab was sentenced under Saudi’s counterterrorism law. Human Rights Watch reviewed al-Shehab’s X account and found that most tweets prior to her arrest related to her family and women’s rights issues in Saudi Arabia.
On July 10, 2023, the Specialized Criminal Court, Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism tribunal, convicted Muhammad al-Ghamdi, 54, a retired Saudi teacher, of several criminal offenses related solely to his peaceful expression online. The court sentenced him to death, using his tweets, retweets, and YouTube activity as the evidence against him. In September 2024, his sentence was reduced to 30 years in prison.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later confirmed that al-Ghamdi had indeed been sentenced to death for his social media posts. In an interview with Fox News in September 2023, he said, “Shamefully, it’s true,” and blamed the sentence on “bad laws.” However, the oppressive counterterrorism law that led to al-Ghamdi’s death sentence was reissued in 2017, after Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to power.
In May 2024, the same counterterrorism tribunal convicted Asaad al-Ghamdi, 47, Mohammed’s brother, of several criminal offenses related solely to his peaceful expression online. Saeed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, a third brother, 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.
In 2017, Saudi authorities arrested an economist and writer, Essam al-Zamel, who had criticized on social media some Saudi government claims about a plan at the time to carry out an initial public offering for the state-owned fossil fuel company, Aramco.
These sentences for peaceful social media posts have had a severe chilling effect on freedom of expression inside of Saudi Arabia and on dissidents living abroad, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch has long documented the Saudi government’s flagrant abuse of the vague provisions in its counterterrorism law and anti-cybercrime law to silence dissent. The broad definition of terrorism allows for targeting peaceful criticism. The counterterrorism law undermines due process and fair trial rights because it grants the Public Prosecution agency and the Presidency of State Security the authority to arrest and detain people, monitor their communications and financial data, search their property, and seize assets without judicial oversight.
Saudi authorities have also repeatedly spied on their own citizens through targeted digital attacks. In October, the UK High Court issued an order granting permission to a prominent Saudi human rights defender, Yahya Assiri, to bring a case against the Saudi government for using spyware against him between 2018 and 2020.
Citizen Lab, a Canadian academic research center, concluded with “high confidence” that in 2018, the mobile phone of a prominent Saudi activist based in Canada was infected with spyware, which allowed full access to the victim’s personal files, such as chats, emails, and photos, as well as the ability to surreptitiously use the phone’s microphones and cameras to view and eavesdrop. In July 2021, the Pegasus Project also found that Saudi Arabia was a potential client of the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. The NSO group has categorically denied that its technology was used to spy on Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident who was killed in a Saudi consulate in Turkey.
Saudi Arabia’s new data protection law and executive regulations grant sweeping powers to government agencies to access personal data. The entities that control data are permitted to disclose data to state agencies based on vague and overbroad “security reasons,” which are not defined in the law. The law does not appear to provide for any independent oversight of these government powers.
Many digital rights organizations and members of civil society have chosen not to participate in person at this year’s internet forum due to serious concerns about their own safety in a host country that has jailed people based on their social media posts. The Saudi government at a minimum should guarantee the safety, including from arrest, of all participants, especially civil society, attending the meeting. The UN should ensure that future internet forums are held in environments in which civil society can participate safely without fear of retribution.
“Mohammed bin Salman should announce the release of Salma al-Shehab, Mohammed al-Ghamdi, and Assad al-Ghamdi, among many others, on day one of the IGF,” Shea said. “What is sadly much more likely given Saudi Arabia’s current rights trajectory, is the news of even more outrageous, decades-long sentences for social media posts.”
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