Saudi 'infiltrated' Wikipedia, jailed senior admins: Reports

Saudi Arabia has reportedly "infiltrated" Wikipedia's highest ranks and jailed two of its senior admins as means of manipulating the free online encyclopedia's content in the kingdom's favor.

The information was announced in a joint statement on Thursday by Washington-headquartered Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) activism group, which was founded by the slain Saudi Arabia journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and Beirut-based SMEX, which advances digital rights across the Arab world.

They cited findings by Wikipedia's parent body Wikimedia as well as "whistleblowers and trusted sources" for the information.

"Wikimedia's investigation revealed that the Saudi government had infiltrated the highest ranks in Wikipedia's team in the region," DAWN and SMEX's statement read.

According to Wikimedia's probe, Riyadh deployed an unspecified number of the kingdom's citizens, some forcibly so, as its "agents" in order to enable the infiltration.

Last month, Wikimedia banned 16 of its users for "engaging in conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region," in an apparent effort to prevent manipulation of Wikipedia's content in favor of regional regimes such as Saudi Arabia.

Wikimedia's findings showed that "a number of users with close connections with external parties were editing the platform in a coordinated fashion to advance the aim of those parties."

DAWN and SMEX also reported that the Saudi government had placed two high-ranking admins -- with privileged access to Wikipedia, including the ability to edit fully protected pages -- under arrest in September 2020.

They named the two people as Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani, saying Khalid had been jailed for 32 years and Sofiani had received an eight-year sentence.

"The arrests of Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani on one hand, and the infiltration of Wikipedia on the other hand, show a horrifying aspect of how the Saudi government wants to control the narrative and Wikipedia," Abdullah Alaoudh, DAWN's director of research for the Persian Gulf region, told AFP.

Back in 2017, the Saudi kingdom changed its counterterrorism laws to include dissent as a punishable crime. The new laws came to stipulate penalties of up to 10 years in jail for insulting the king and the crown prince as well as the death penalty for "other acts of terrorism."

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Ever since, Riyadh has either arrested or jailed hundreds of activists, bloggers, intellectuals, clerics, and others for their political activism, showing almost zero tolerance for dissent even in the face of international condemnation of the crackdown.

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