KSA infiltrates Wikipedia, jails two top admins to control free speech

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News websites
6 Jan 10:54

The two individuals are identified as Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani, with the former receiving a 32-year sentence and Sofiani receiving an eight-year sentence.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales attending a hackathon in 2019 in KSA (AFP)

Wikipedia has reportedly been "infiltrated" by Saudi Arabia which has imprisoned two of its senior admins in an attempt to exploit the free online encyclopedia's content, according to a joint statement on Thursday by Beirut-based SMEX, which advances digital rights across the Arab region, and the Washington-headquartered Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) activism group, which was founded by slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"Wikimedia's investigation revealed that the Saudi government had infiltrated the highest ranks in Wikipedia's team in the region," DAWN and SMEX's statement read, adding that Saudi Arabia hired a number of its citizens to act as "agents" in order to facilitate the infiltration.

16 users were banned last month by Wikimedia for "engaging in conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the MENA region," as part of efforts to control the content in favor of the kingdom's desires., which Wikimedia confirmed in its probe: "a number of users with close connections with external parties were editing the platform in a coordinated fashion to advance the aim of those parties."

Dissent as a crime

The two top admins confirmed and identified by the DAWN-SMEX joint statement were placed under arrest in September 2020. The two individuals were identified as Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani, with the former receiving a 32-year sentence and Sofiani receiving an eight-year sentence.

DAWN's director of research for the Gulf region, Abdullah Alaoudh, relayed to AFP: "The arrests of Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani on one hand, and the infiltration of Wikipedia on the other hand, show a horrifying aspect of how the Saudi government wants to control the narrative and Wikipedia,"

Counterterrorism laws were altered by KSA back in 2017 to entail dissent as a punishable crime, stipulating penalties of up to 10 years in prison for offending both the king and the crown prince, and "other acts of terrorism" would receive the death penalty.

Hundreds of activists, bloggers, academics, clerics, and other individuals have been detained by Saudi authorities ever since the law was amended for political activism. Recently, Saudi journalist Turki Al-Shalhoub, who previously triggered a public outcry for exposing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s contentious plans against highly revered sites in KSA, tweeted in late December that the State Security Court had passed the ruling regarding the professor at the media faculty of Umm al-Qura University in Mecca, Muhammad bin Mohsin Basurrah. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

بسبب هذه التغريدات، حكمت محاكم التفتيش #السعودية على المحاضر في قسم الإعلام في جامعة أم القرى الاستاذ محمد بن محسن باصرة بالسجن 30 سنة!!! pic.twitter.com/J3ubVCkQF0
— تركي الشلهوب (@TurkiShalhoub) December 27, 2022

A Saudi opposition activist, Abdul Hakim bin Abdul Aziz, also revealed that the Saudi authorities had arrested his son, Yasser, from his university, as part of the Kingdom's aggressive crackdown against activists that criticize the performance of the ruling regime on social media.

Bin Abdul Aziz considered that the arrest of his son exposes "the oppression and tyranny of the ruling regime in Saudi Arabia and is a desperate attempt to force me to remain silent about the violations that the country is witnessing."

Over the past years, the country also redefined its anti-terrorism laws to persecute peaceful activists, repressing freedom of expression.