Saudi journalist was imprisoned for writing tweets against Saudi govt
Recently, Saudi Arabian authorities have arrested and sentenced a university professor to 30 years imprisonment for writing tweets against the House of Saud, its propaganda policies, and the security situation in the kingdom.
Turki al-Shalhoub, a Saudi journalist who earlier also came in limelight for bringing public uproar after exposing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s controversial plans against highly revered sites in the country, tweeted on Tuesday that the State Security Court had passed the ruling against the Muhammad bin Mohsin al-Basra, professor at Umm al-Qura University in Mecca.
Shalhoub referred to a series of tweets from Basra and wrote that he had blasted the disinformation campaign at Saudi- owned and Dubai-based al-Arabiya television news network over a three-year-old Qatar diplomatic issue with Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries.
“Saudi security forces only intervene when the sovereignty of the House of Saud is threatened; otherwise they would not take any serious actions,” the journalist commented.
This was not the first incident that occurred in the Middle East. For many years disinformation campaigns were running in Social media to degrade the image of their adversaries.
For instance, UAE hired top GOP donor Elliot Broidy was paid over $200 million for an illegal smear campaign against its Middle East rival Qatar. To achieve this task of spreading disinformation he created two fake news websites such as Qaterexposed.com and BoycottQatarnow.com.
Similarly, Qatar too was not lacking in running influential campaigns against its enemies, particularly in cases involving the International Football Federation Association (FIFA), and with the help of Italian consultant-journalist Paolo Fusi, Qatar attack the pro-Emirati journalist and lobbyists such as Ghanem Nuseibeh’s Cornerstone Global.
It is clear from the above article that Middle Eastern nations hired foreign firms to run disinformation campaigns against each other to fulfill their nation’s interests.
