Cairo, August 27 (EFE).- Saudi Arabian authorities sentence the brother of a high-profile Saudi activist to death for allegedly posting on X (formerly Twitter) criticism of corruption and the human rights situation in the Arab monarchy, The Gulf Center for Human Rights (CGHR) report today.

The sentence against Mohamed bin Nasser al Ghamdi was issued on July 10, after posting from an “unknown account” on platform X (formerly Twitter) “criticism of corruption” and “violations of human rights” being committed in Saudi Arabia, the NGO said in a statement. statement.

His brother, the well-known activist Saeed bin Nasser al Ghamdi, who has been in exile in the UK since 2018, defended on August 24 at X that the court specializing in terrorism cases that tried his relative had not received a medical report showing that the convict suffered from a “nervous disease”. chronic”.

Nor does it take into account that the profile from which this publication was created is “unknown” and “only has nine followers”.

Given this situation, Saeed emphasized that the death sentence against his brother, which he described as “wrong”, was intended to force the 62-year-old activist back to Saudi Arabia, after the Saudi intelligence services made an “unsuccessful attempt”. ” to send him back.

The dissident was a victim of the Saudi government’s fierce campaign against critics in 2017, which led to a wave of arrests of human rights defenders, and in 2018 he sought political asylum in Britain and from there ran the Sanad Rights Foundation. which documented human rights abuses in the kingdom.

“CGHR considers this a dangerous escalation after the shocking decades of prison sentences meted out to human rights defenders (…) Saudi Arabia has turned into a repressive police state,” the NGO said in a statement, in which he recalled that dozens of activists had recently been arrested for their activities on the Internet.

The organization also said it “firmly believes that the death penalty has been widely used as a political tool by the Saudi government and designed to sow fear in the country and terrorize citizens, especially human rights activists.” EFE

cgs/rsm/pddp