A review of Leeds PhD student Salma al-Shehab’s tweets and interactions shows she was messaged by a person using an account in Saudi Arabia on November 15, 2020, after she posted a mildly critical tweet in response to a Saudi government post about with a new public transport contract. The user told Shehab that he had referred her to the Saudi app, which is called Kollona Amn or We Are All Security. It is unclear whether Saudi officials responded immediately to the report, but the 34-year-old mother was arrested two months later. Shehab’s case has been condemned by rights groups and other pro-democracy media who said the draconian sentence against her was more evidence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s relentless crackdown on dissent. A spokesman for the University of Leeds said on Wednesday: “We are deeply concerned to learn of this recent development in Salma’s case and are seeking advice on whether there is anything we can do to support her. Our thoughts remain with Salma, her family and her friends in our close-knit community of postgraduate researchers.” Shehab’s research focused on improving dental treatment for patients with disabilities. Shehab was still working on completing her PhD in the UK in December 2020 when she returned home to Saudi Arabia to visit her family. A few weeks after her visit, she was asked to report to Saudi authorities who arrested and tried her for using Twitter. Her alleged crimes included using the website to “incite public disturbance” and “aiding those who seek to cause public disturbance and destabilize politics and national security by following their Twitter accounts” and retweeting their tweets. Sehab had about 2,000 followers. An examination of her account activity shows that on October 8, 2019, Shehab responded to a tweet from a verified Saudi account reporting developments in the kingdom’s infrastructure projects. When the account tweeted about the launch of a new bus network, it tweeted the word “finally!”. More than a year later, on November 15, 2020, a Saudi account with around 200 followers – showing a man’s face and using the name Faisal OTB – responded to her tweet with abuse. The user wrote that he was intrigued by Shehab’s Twitter account because it displayed both the Saudi flag and the Palestinian flag and accused her of posting “garbage”. The account user then said he had taken screenshots of some of Shehab’s Twitter activity and reported it to Kollona Amn – adding that he hoped she would be deported to Palestine. Shehab’s response – published just before she left the UK to return to Saudi Arabia – was defiant. He said in a short reply that it would not be so bad to go to Palestine, where he could visit the Holy Mosque in Jerusalem, and that he should do as he pleased. On Saudi Arabia’s official websites, Kollona Amn – which also has a Twitter account – is described as an app that allows citizens and expatriates to file security and criminal reports about privacy attacks, threats, impersonation, extortion, account hacking social media, defamation, fraud and other criminal offenses and security reports. Noura Aljizawi, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which identifies digital threats to civil society, said the use of such apps – which can be downloaded through app stores for iPhone and Android users – represented a “new phase of digital authoritarianism”. “In the past this kind of censorship was carried out by security intelligence forces, but now having these apps and encouraging citizens to report each other opens the door to mass censorship,” he said. “It’s very worrying because people who post something can’t foresee the danger or who are going to report it, and who will go back and look in their feed for posts that are inconsistent with government propaganda,” Aljizawi said. Recalling her own experience in Syria, Aljizawi described the phenomenon of citizens not being able to trust their neighbors. “Sometimes people get into trouble. They need a promotion or they need to prove their loyalty to the state, so they do something like that. Just take a screenshot and report it,” he said. Apple and Google did not immediately respond to questions from the Guardian about whether they would reconsider their license to download Kollona Amn in light of Shehab’s sentence. Alex Hern’s weekly dive into how technology is shaping our lives Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Bethany Al-Haidari, the Saudi Arabia director at the Freedom Initiative, a US-based human rights group, said Saudi Arabia had used technology to violate human rights and track government targets for decades. “Now we see that Kollona Amn may be linked to the detention of a women’s rights defender. Technology has a wonderful power to transform and develop a society. But in the hands of a dictatorship that targets human rights defenders, technology is turning into a terrifying tool that fast-tracks repression, and the consequences are severe,” he said. A friend of Shehab’s in the UK said they were concerned she had been targeted by the government because she was a PhD student. The friend, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of being targeted, said Shehab would regularly tweet to advocate for the rights of others, but believed she had gone unnoticed because she did not have many Twitter followers. “She [would] always stand with all human rights in saudi arabia or outside saudi arabia. She has a very kind personality and you can’t see her without a great smile on her face.” The person said Shehab, who has been studying in the UK since 2017, was not particularly critical of the government and was a supporter of Vision 2030, Prince Mohammed’s plan to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and towards services such as health and tourism. The person said: “He took small steps towards women’s rights, like driving.” Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn said she was “shocked” to read about Shehab’s case and would raise the issue of her sentence with the government. “She should be released to return to her young children and husband and to her studies at Leeds,” he said.
