According to UK-based Metro website, Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser was arrested on March 15 for allegedly running a Twitter account called Kashkool, which exposed human rights violations by Saudi authorities and royals. He then died while being tortured in detention, The New Khaleej states – prompting fresh outrage over an alleged leak of information that leads to his capture.
‘They got his information from the Twitter office in Dubai. That is how he was arrested,’ a source, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Metro.co.uk. ‘Twitter has become insecure for dissidents or critics. Everyone speaks under threat and pressure.
‘The accounts of Saudi dissidents are spied on. We are not safe using Twitter.’ The source also claimed that Saud al-Qahtani, the former adviser to the Royal Court, leads a ‘cyber spy ring’ and has contacts inside the Dubai Twitter office. They allege that a so-called ‘Twitter mole’ handed over information on Al-Jasser, leading to his arrest earlier this year.
They’re not the only one. After news of Al-Jasser’s alleged death broke, many people began using the hashtag #TwitterKilledTurkiAlJasser in an attempt to call out the platform for being ‘unsafe’. ‘We want justice for activists who arrested because of Twitter,’ one person tweeted.
Another said ‘Twitter [is] not safe anymore’, while a third wrote: ‘Twitter must revise its privacy policy. Literally, lives are at stake here.’ Al-Qahtani, who was dismissed from his role over journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death, alluded to the ‘three methods’ officials use to unmask activists on social media last year. In a tweet from 2017, he warned that fake names could not protect dissidents.
MNA/PR