Seven Saudi Arabia Nationals Faces 5-10Yr Jail Time for Motivating Rebellion on Facebook

Seven Saudi Arabian nationals, all males from the kingdom's eastern province, have been recently convicted to a 5- to 10-year jail time for using Facebook to motivate the citizenry to rebel against the government.

Arrested in September 2011 and detained for a year-and-a-half in Damman, the kingdom's Specialized Criminal Court likewise banned the group from traveling overseas, according to the New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Sunday.

The Specialized Criminal Court found all seven guilty of violating article six of Saudi Arabia's Anti-Cyber Crime Law, which states that producing, sending, or storing any material via an information network that "harms public order" is strictly prohibited.

The convicted were:

• Saleh bin Abd al-Muhsin bin Ali al-Shaya': 5 years in prison and 5-year travel ban;
• Hussein bin Salman bin Yasin al-Sulayman: 7 years and 7-year travel ban;
• Mohammed bin Ahmed bin Abd a-Hadi al-Khalifa: 8 years and 8-year travel ban;
• Mostafa bin Haji bin Hussein al-Mujahad: 6 years and 6-year travel ban;
• Hussein bin Ali bin bin Mohammed al-Bathir: 5 years and 5-year travel ban;
• Ali bin Hassan bin Ali al-Hadlaq: 7 years and 7-year travel ban; and
• Abd al-Hamid bin Abd al-Muhsin bin Abdullah al-Amer: 10 years and 10-year travel ban.

But the rights group condemned the verdict, claiming that despite their detention, police authorities never slapped the group charges directly pertaining to the perceive rebellion. HRW likewise slammed the Saudi court for failing to investigate the allegations of the seven individuals that intelligence officers tortured them to sign confessions.

"Sending people off to years in prison for peaceful Facebook posts sends a strong message that there's no safe way to speak out in Saudi Arabia, even on online social networks," Joe Stork, HRW's deputy Middle East director, said in a statement.

"If the EU doesn't raise these cases with Saudi officials this weekend, its silence will look like craven compliance with the rights abuses of an authoritarian state."

The activists, who were all Shi'ite from the al-Ahsa governorate, admitted their participation in the Facebook pages to support the arrest of Tawfiq al-Amer, a prominent Shiite sheikh and religious leader in the region. But they told the court they were unaware liking those pages was a crime.

They also denied implied intentions of breaking allegiance with the kingdom or inciting public order chaos.

But prosecutors maintained those pages were used to call for followers "to join the movements" and "gave them ideas and guidance on the important sites in which to protest and set the timing [of the protests]."