In 2014, Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser warned in a tweet that his government was justifying executions under the guise of national security. In a grim outcome, al-Jasser met the very fate he foresaw. On 14 June 2025, Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry announced that al-Jasser had been executed following seven years of arbitrary detention on vague charges of terrorism, treason, and threatening national security. His case marks the first time a journalist has been sentenced to death and executed in Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, underscoring the regime’s problematic conflation of peaceful dissent with terrorism through its Anti-Terrorism Law. Al-Jasser’s execution also epitomizes the kingdom’s escalating and alarming use of capital punishment to silence critics.
Al-Jasser expressed his journalistic views across various media platforms. He founded the news blog Al-Mashhad Al-Saudi (The Saudi Scene), which regularly addressed topics like women’s rights and Palestine. Yet, it was his activity on Twitter (now known as X) that enraged Saudi authorities. In addition to a public account under his name, al-Jasser maintained an anonymous satirical account, Kashkool, which criticized the royal family’s corruption and human rights abuses. The latter was of particular concern, as between 2014 and 2015, Saudi Arabia carried out an infiltration scheme to deliberately expose and repress anonymity on Twitter by gaining access to users’ real identities and IP addresses. Al-Jasser, likely targeted in this online crackdown, was accused by Saudi authorities of conspiring to overthrow the government through his social media activity. These accusations ultimately led to his arrest.
In March 2018, Saudi security forces raided al-Jasser’s home, seized his electronic devices, and abducted him, taking him to an unknown detention center. For nearly two years, his whereabouts remained unknown, with various media outlets and international organizations suspecting he had died under torture. Only in February 2020 did authorities disclose, in response to inquiries by the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, that al-Jasser was being detained in Al-Ha’ir Prison in Riyadh and investigated for national security crimes. After brief contact with his family during that same period, al-Jasser forcibly disappeared again, with no further communication or updates until news of his execution broke in June 2025.
Al-Jasser’s name has now joined the ever-expanding list of those executed under Saudi Arabia’s excessive use of capital punishment. Alarmingly, in just the first four months of 2025, Saudi Arabia executed 100 people, reaching a pace that threatens to surpass 2024’s record of 345 executions. This practice has made the kingdom the third most prolific executioner in the world. Although international human rights law limits the use of the death penalty to the “most serious crimes,” Saudi Arabia has repeatedly applied it to non-lethal political offenses, including peaceful dissent. In fact, amid the deaths recorded in 2025, at least 11 of them were executed under political charges. Moreover, the lack of transparency surrounding many of these executions, including al-Jasser’s, as authorities withhold critical details about charges, trials, and rulings, serves to mask the abuse of the death penalty as a tool of repression and allows authorities to evade accountability for unlawful judgments.
These troubling circumstances persist despite Crown Prince bin Salman’s public assurances that reforming Saudi Arabia’s repressive laws is imperative. However, the continued misuse of the Anti-Terrorism Law to silence peaceful critics like al-Jasser reinforces that these pledges remain void. Given that Saudi law requires royal approval for every execution, legal scholars have stressed that al-Jasser’s death was a deliberate choice made at the highest levels of power.
With Reporters Without Borders (RSF) documenting at least 19 journalists currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, al-Jasser’s execution raises grave concerns about the future of these detainees and the severe repercussions they face amid the country’s escalating crackdown on dissent and unprecedented use of capital punishment. Saudi Arabia’s actions flagrantly violate international human rights norms and endanger the lives of those who dare to speak out. Without meaningful reform, al-Jasser may be only the first of many journalists to be targeted under Crown Prince bin Salman’s rule.
