A prominent Saudi journalist who was arrested in 2018 and convicted on terrorism and treason charges has been executed, the kingdom said. Activist groups maintain that the charges against him were trumped up.
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Saudi Arabia has executed prominent journalist Turki Al-Jasser, who was arrested in 2018 and later convicted on charges of terrorism and treason. The official Saudi Press Agency confirmed the execution took place on Saturday after the kingdom’s highest court upheld the death sentence.
Al-Jasser was detained following a raid on his residence in 2018, during which authorities confiscated his electronic devices. Details surrounding his trial including its duration and location, remain unclear.
Rights organisations have questioned the legitimacy of the charges. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Saudi officials believed Al-Jasser operated a social media account on X (formerly Twitter) that posted allegations of corruption involving members of the royal family. He was also accused of sharing contentious content related to militant groups.
Activist groups have condemned the execution, insisting the charges were fabricated to silence dissent.
CPJ’s program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna condemned the execution and said the lack of accountability in the wake of the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018 allows for continued persecution of journalists in the kingdom.
“The international community’s failure to deliver justice for Jamal Khashoggi did not just betray one journalist,” he said, adding it had “emboldened de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to continue his persecution of the press.”
A Saudi assassination team killed Khashoggi at the consulate in Istanbul. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that the Saudi crown prince ordered the operation but the kingdom insists the prince was not involved in the killing.
Al-Jasser ran a personal blog from 2013 to 2015 and was well-known for his articles on the Arab Spring movements that shook the Middle East in 2011, women’s rights and corruption.
Saudi Arabia has drawn criticism from human rights groups for its numbers and also methods of capital punishment, including beheadings and mass executions. In 2024, executions in Saudi Arabia rose to 330, according to activists and human rights groups, as the kingdom continues to tightly clamp down on dissent.
Last month, a British Bank of America analyst was sentenced to a decade in prison in Saudi Arabia, apparently over a since-deleted social media post, according to his lawyer.
And in 2021, a dual Saudi American national, Saad Almadi, was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison on terrorism-related charges stemming from tweets he had posted while living in the United States. He was released in 2023 but has been banned from leaving the kingdom.
With inputs from agencies
