A British national has been sentenced to ten years in prison in Saudi Arabia on charges that appear to relate to a single, now deleted tweet, according to British lawyers and Reprieve, the civil rights group supporting his family.
Ahmed al-Doush, a Manchester-based senior business analyst with Bank of America, was arrested by Saudi authorities on 31 August 2024 while on a family holiday in the Kingdom. Nearly nine months later, he was handed a ten-year sentence by the country’s Specialised Criminal Court, although the precise charges remain unclear.
According to relatives, al-Doush was told five months after his arrest that he would be charged under Saudi Arabia’s anti-cybercrime and anti-terrorism laws, including allegations that he had spread “fake, untrue and damaging news” on social media and of maintaining a relationship with someone said to pose a threat to national security.
His wife, Amaher Nour, who remains in Manchester with their four children, including a baby born during his detention, received brief notification of the sentence from the lawyer appointed to him by the Saudi government. That lawyer has since refused to share the court’s judgment or any sentencing documentation with her or with al-Doush’s UK-based legal team.
Officials from the UK Foreign Office were reportedly allowed to observe the trial. They played no formal role and merely relayed the outcome to his legal team in the UK.
With no access to court documents, his family has been left to piece together what little they know from indirect clues. They believe the accusations may relate to a now-deleted 2018 tweet about the political situation in Sudan, which made no reference to Saudi Arabia. Their suspicion is based on the line of questioning during his interrogations. They also suspect the second allegation concerns a tenuous link to a Saudi dissident in exile, whose son al-Doush once met but with whom he had no further connection.
Speaking after the ruling, Haydee Dijkstal, a barrister providing international legal support to al-Doush, said: “Online expression, even if expressing concern or criticism of a government, should not be criminalised or lead to detention and imprisonment. Using anti-terrorism legislation to punish and repress online expression on social media with severe prison sentences is inconsistent with international law and human rights standards.”
Al-Doush’s wife, Amaher Nour told The Times that the toll of her husband’s imprisonment is mounting. “Before the judgment was handed down, Ahmed was already suffering with back and thyroid issues and was becoming increasingly mentally distressed,” she said. “I can only imagine what he is going through now, knowing he won’t see his family again for years.”
Al-Doush’s case underscores the uncomfortable reality of the UK’s growing ties with a regime that systematically crushes online dissent.
Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in soft power through sport, acquiring Newcastle United Football Club via its sovereign wealth fund, sponsoring high-profile boxing bouts in Britain, and staging LIV Golf tournaments on UK soil. These ventures have been eagerly embraced by Western institutions. Yet behind the brand-building lies a system that has jailed dozens of writers, bloggers and social media users in recent years, with many prosecuted under laws designed to criminalise digital dissent.
Frequently invoked is the Anti-Cybercrime Law of 2007, which criminalises the “production, preparation, transmission or storage” of material deemed to “infringe on public order”. The scope of the law is wide, encompassing a broad range of digital expression that touches on religion, public morals, or privacy.
The government has also relied on the 2017 Counter-Terrorism Law, which has enabled even peaceful online commentary or satire to be reclassified under the deliberately vague heading of a national security threat. Among other provisions, the law imposes five to ten years’ imprisonment for portraying the king or crown prince, directly or indirectly, “in a manner that brings religion or justice into disrepute.” It also allows for a 15-year sentence for those who use their “social status or media influence to promote terrorism.” In practice, these provisions are often combined with other charges, allowing courts to issue sentences far beyond the statutory minimums.
Even by the standards of those familiar with creeping speech restrictions in the UK, the outcomes in Saudi Arabia are startling. In 2024, Palestinian journalist Hatem al-Najjar was detained for nine months after pro-government accounts engaged in “offence archaeology,” dredging up tweets from 2010 and promoting the hashtag “#Arrest_Hatem_AlNajjer.” Fatima El-Shawarbi, who ran a pseudonymous account posting about political prisoners and economic injustice, was sentenced in 2023 to 30 years in prison. And in an unprecedented case, a retired teacher was sentenced to death for a handful of tweets shared with just a few followers.
Other prosecutions reflect the regime’s particular intolerance of women’s rights. In January 2024, blogger and influencer Manahel al-Otaibi was sentenced to 11 years in prison, partly for calling for an end to the male guardianship system that governs nearly every aspect of women’s lives. Asma al-Subaie, an online commentator who criticised that system while at university, has been detained without charge since 2021.
Even modest online engagement has proved dangerous. In August 2022, Leeds University PhD student Salma al-Shehab received a 34-year sentence for following dissidents and retweeting their posts. Her charges included “assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security” via social media. Another Saudi woman, Noura al-Qahtani, was given 45 years after being accused of “using the internet to tear [Saudi Arabia’s] social fabric.” Meanwhile, Ziad al-Sufyani, who had updated Wikipedia entries on women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, was arrested in 2020 and sentenced to eight years in prison.
As Ahmed al-Doush begins his own ten-year sentence, without a clear charge, trial record, or explanation, his case joins this grim catalogue. It stands as a chilling reminder of what happens when legal systems are repurposed not to protect justice, but to criminalise dissenting voices.
