Riyadh: A Saudi woman Fatima al-Shawarbi, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for using Twitter to express her opinions.
Fatima al-Shawarbi, from al-Ahsa province, was sentenced during an appeal at the Special Criminal Court (SCC), sources familiar with the case told Alqst, a UK-based rights group.
Shawarbi reportedly used her anonymous Twitter account to promote the Howeitat – a tribe whose members were forcibly displaced for the Neom megaproject – demanding women’s rights and a constitutional monarchy.
Shawarbi was arrested in November 2020 and is believed to have been sentenced by the SCC earlier this year, sources told Alqst.
This is not the first time the kingdom has punished someone for using social media.
In August 2022, a woman named Salma Al-Shehab was sentenced to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account and for posting tweets about activists and critics of the Mohammed bin Salman regime.
In August 2022, Nourah al-Qahtani, a mother of five, was sentenced a week later to 45 years in prison over tweets from two anonymous accounts.
In November 2022, Abdullah Jelan, a university graduate who dreamed of becoming a health educator for the Saudi government, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, plus a 10-year travel ban, for anonymous tweets that focused largely on unemployment.
Other Saudis have recently faced criminal charges for their social media activities, including sisters and prominent social media influencers Manahel and Fouz al-Otaibi.
In 2022, the Kingdom executed 196 people, including the mass execution of 81 in one day, according to Amnesty International.
