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Saudi ruler bin Salman at the G20 summit in Bali last November
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Leon Neal / PA Wire / dpa
In Saudi Arabia, a well-known law professor has apparently been sentenced to death - among other things because he had a Twitter account.
The Guardian reports on this with reference to court documents.
It said Awad Al-Qarni, 65, also used WhatsApp to spread "hostile" news about the kingdom.
Al-Qarni was arrested in September 2017.
The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, then the new ruler in the country, cracked down on critics of the regime.
The Middle East Eye news agency reported back in 2018 that prosecutors were demanding the death penalty for Al-Qarni and other clerics.
According to the Guardian, Al-Qarni is a respected intellectual with a large following on social media.
His Twitter account, on which he last published in September 2017, has two million followers.
In the state media, however, Al-Qarni is said to have been portrayed as a dangerous preacher.
According to the report, the Guardian got the court documents from Al-Qarni's son, who fled Saudi Arabia last year and now lives in Great Britain.
Accordingly, Al-Qarni admitted to having used social media to express his opinion.
The Guardian quotes the human rights group Reprieve as saying that the case fits into a trend.
Scholars and academics were threatened with the death penalty for tweeting and expressing their opinions.
The Saudis themselves are investing in social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
"If it weren't so scary, it would be ridiculous," Jeed Basouni, Reprieve's regional director, told the Guardian.
Case reminiscent of Kashoggi
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch had already complained about the repression of dissidents and peaceful activists in Saudi Arabia after Al-Qarni's arrest in 2017.
Journalist Jamal Kashoggi was brutally murdered in the Saudi consulate general in Istanbul in 2018.
American intelligence holds bin Salman responsible for the murder.
The crown prince denies that.
The Kashoggi case had led to rifts between Saudi Arabia and the West.
In the meantime, however, bin Salman has returned to the international stage: last summer, the Crown Prince met US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron.
In view of the skyrocketing energy prices due to the war in Ukraine, the meetings with bin Salman also discussed Saudi Arabia as an energy supplier.
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