Twitter users taunt Saudi Arabia

The hashtag #SueMeSaudi is soaring after a source at the Saudi Arabian justice ministry reportedly said he would sue a Twitter user who compared Saudi Arabia to the terror group "Islamic State"

الكاتبة ، الكاتب: Conor Dillon

The justice ministry official was quoted by the government-aligned Al Riyadh newspaper as saying "The justice ministry will sue the person who described ... the sentencing of a man to death for apostasy as being 'IS-like,'" Reuters reports.

Infographic compares the punishments meted out by IS to those of Saudi Arabia (source: MiddleEastEye.net)

The official did not define who the Twitter user was or what the potential punishment would be, but he did succeed in accidentally creating two hashtags: #SaudiArabiaIsISIS and #SueMeSaudi. Comparing Saudi Arabia to terror group "Islamic State" had already become more common ever since Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh was sentenced to death for "spreading atheism and disrespecting the prophet" in November.

But it was the threat of legal action against the Twitter user in Saudi Arabia that has encouraged other Twitter users throughout the world to openly defy and even taunt the Saudi government.

One image that's being tweeted and retweeted is an image originally created by the online news portal MiddleEastEye.net that breaks down and compares Saudi Arabia's policies with those of IS.

Online scrutiny of Saudi Arabia has increased dramatically ever since the country convicted blogger Raif Badawi to 1,000 lashes for apostasy. He has received 50 so far, with weekly Friday protests – both offline and online – having raised international awareness about his plight.

The poet Ashraf Fayadh has 30 days to appeal this conviction. He maintains the accusations are false – as he has since he was first tried and found guilty of the crimes in 2014 before being retried.

Human Rights Watch, which has seen Fayadh's trial documents, says the charges include blaspheming "the divine self" and the Prophet Muhammed, spreading atheism, mocking the verses of God and the prophets, refuting the Koran and having an illicit relationship with women and storing their pictures on his phone. In theory, Fayadh's conviction could result in his beheading.

Saudia Arabia has executed more than 150 people in 2015, the most in decades. The majority of these beheadings are due to murder and drug charges. (DW)