Campaigners say Saudi Arabia executed prominent journalist for Twitter account

Turki al-Jasser, a prominent Saudi journalist who highlighted corruption, women’s rights and the Palestinian cause in his writing, was executed in Saudi Arabia on Saturday after the kingdom’s top court upheld his death sentence, the Saudi Interior Ministry announced on X. 

Saudi authorities raided Jasser’s home in March 2018, seizing his electronic devices and arresting him. He was later convicted of terrorism and treason. 

But campaigners have long held that he was imprisoned because authorities believed he was running a Twitter account which reported on corruption and human rights violations by those in power, including the Saudi royal family.

Al-Jasser's supporters and advocates said his execution, committed while world attention was on Israel’s attacks on Iran, demonstrated once again that criticism of the authorities in Saudi Arabia would not be tolerated.

They also drew parallels between Jasser’s execution and the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, another prominent Saudi journalist, who was dismembered by a Saudi murder squad in the kingdom’s embassy in Istanbul. 

Jeed Basyouni, who leads the Middle East and North African death penalty team for the UK-based organisation Reprieve, said: “This execution once again demonstrates that in Saudi Arabia, the punishment for criticising or questioning Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is death. 

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“The echoes of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder are profoundly disturbing. In the last two years, the Saudi authorities have executed far more people than ever before, and daily executions are now the norm. Capital punishment remains a key tool of repression for this brutal authoritarian regime.”

In 2024, Saudi Arabia executed more than 300 people: in May, it put to death its 100th prisoner so far this year.

Carlos Martínez de la Serna, chief program officer for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said Jasser’s execution was a consequence of the impunity Saudi leadership had enjoyed in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder.

“The international community’s failure to deliver justice for Jamal Khashoggi did not just betray one journalist,” de la Serna said on Saturday. “It emboldened de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman [MBS] to continue his persecution of the press, and today, another Saudi journalist has paid the price.” 

Sa’ad al-Faqih, a Saudi dissident based in the UK, said Jasser’s execution was “graver” than Khashoggi’s murder and signalled “a dangerous new phase”.

“Khashoggi was killed in secret by regime agents without trial or legal procedure... MBS spent a long time denying any responsibility, and when he was finally cornered, he deflected blame onto a few of his ‘dirty dogs’,” Faqih wrote. 

“In contrast, Turki al-Jasser’s execution passed through every level of the judicial system - up to the Supreme Court - and the regime then proudly and publicly announced his killing as if it were a battlefield triumph.”

Crackdown on social media

As Mohammed bin Salman's economic and social reforms have made headlines in recent years, human rights activists have highlighted a parallel crackdown on dissent, including extreme sentences handed out to individuals for their social media posts. 

One of the most high-profile cases was that of Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds doctoral candidate who was originally sentenced to 34 years in prison, as well as a 34-year travel ban, for tweets and retweets. Shehab was released in February after a high-profile campaign.

But many others, understood to have been arrested for their social media accounts, remain imprisoned or have disappeared. Arrests and sentencing over posts have also continued.

Last month, a Saudi court sentenced Ahmed al-Doush, a British national, to 10 years on charges related to a deleted tweet from 2018.