Public prosecutor Sheikh Saud bin Abdullah Al-Muajab has announced on Twitter a new ruling restricting Saudis’ freedom of speech.
His spokesperson wrote: “Producing and distributing content that ridicules, mocks, provokes and disrupts public order, religious values and public morals through social media will be considered a cybercrime.”
The prosecutor’s office added this crime will be punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of £624,080 (three million riyals).
The clampdown on dissent in the kingdom turned more harsh in June 2017, when the powerful Mohammed bin Salman was appointed Crown Prince and first prime minister, the second most important position in Saudi Arabia after the King.
The kingdom has been scrutinising social media and the internet to monitor the content shared by its citizens since then.
In August 2017, the prosecutor’s office summoned a group of Twitter users to charge them for threatening public safety through “extremism leading to the misguided campaign of thought”.
The Saudi Press Agency reported the social media users had been charged “with criminal offences of harming public order by influencing the integrity and moderation of the intellectual curriculum of the society with harmful participations that took the seriousness of extremism leading to the misguided campaign of thought.”.
A month later, the government urged citizens to keep their eyes peeled on the social media activities of fellow countrymen, asking them to report any potential “terrorist” threat.
International human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have lashed out at the Crown Prince, accusing him of “going after” activists “one by one”.
Following the arrest of two prominent Saudi Arabian human rights defenders Abdulaziz al-Shubaily and Issa al-Hamid in September 2017, Samah Hadid, director of campaigns for Amnesty International in the Middle-East said: “This is a dark time for freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia.
“These two arrests have confirmed our fears that the new leadership under Mohamed bin Salman is determined to crush the Kingdom’s human rights movement.
“Instead of engaging with activists over human rights reforms they are going after them one by one.
“Saudi Arabia’s embattled human rights community has already suffered heavily at the hands of the authorities, and now with these latest arrests almost all the country’s most prominent human rights defenders are now in prison on bogus terrorism-related charges.
“These peaceful activists should be applauded for their courage in standing up for human rights, not rounded up and locked up.”
On Tuesday, the public prosecutor announced it was seeking the death penalty for Salman Odah, an internationally renowned Sunni Muslim scholar and cleric known for his progressive views on controversial social issues.
The scholar has been detained for nearly a year without charges.