On 7 October 2026, Amnesty International urged Saudi authorities to overturn the death sentence imposed on Anojan Sivarasa, a 24-year-old Sri Lankan migrant worker. According to Amnesty, he was arrested on 1 July 2026 over a Facebook comment considered insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. He told the judge he wrote it in anger, deleted it, and published a video apology. The case shows what can happen when a speech offence is defined by open-ended terms and applied by judges with broad discretion.
The strongest case for the law
A fair account starts with what Riyadh's defenders would say. Every state regulates online conduct. Saudi Arabia is a country where religious sensitivity is woven into public life and law, and the government treats insults to the faith as a threat to social peace, as many governments treat incitement. The 2007 Anti-Cyber Crime Law also covers conduct few would defend, including online human trafficking, drug-dealing sites and unauthorised access to data. Seen this way, Article 6 is one provision in a mostly conventional statute, and the Saudi legal system is entitled to define its own public morals.
That argument has real force on fraud, intrusion and trafficking. It is much weaker on speech.
What the statute says
The law was issued by Royal Decree No. M/17 of 8 Rabi' I 1428H (26 March 2007). According to the English translation on WIPO's database, Article 6 covers the production, preparation, transmission or storage of material 'impinging on public order', religious values, public morals or privacy through an information network. The same article also covers trafficking sites, pornography and gambling material, and drug sites. The penalty is imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of up to three million riyals, or either one. The translation notes that the Arabic text governs.
The drafting does the damage. 'Public order', 'religious values' and 'public morals' are undefined. The provision sets no threshold such as intent, likelihood of harm or incitement to violence. A regulator or judge who wants to treat a comment as a crime needs only to call it a breach of religious values. That is the kind of vague wording Amnesty says is routinely used to prosecute expression in Saudi Arabia.
How the case escalated
According to Amnesty, the Criminal Court in Al-Ahsa sentenced Sivarasa on 27 July 2026 to five years in prison and a three million riyal fine, about $800,000. That is the maximum Article 6 allows. On 17 September 2026, the Court of Appeal in the Eastern Region raised the sentence to death. Amnesty describes it as a hadd punishment, a fixed penalty under Sharia. He has appealed. Amnesty also says he had no lawyer from arrest until his initial sentencing.
Reporting in Outlook India adds that prosecutors appealed for harsher treatment. It quotes Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath as telling Parliament that they wanted the case handled under Sharia law. The same report says the Sri Lankan embassy has been told of the enhanced sentence only verbally and is awaiting the formal written judgment, which will set out the legal basis. So the hadd characterisation rests on Amnesty's account until that judgment is seen. Sri Lanka is preparing an appeal to the Saudi Supreme Court and a clemency request to the king.
The sequence matters. The written statute capped the penalty at five years. A parallel body of uncodified rules, applied at the discretion of judges, then replaced that cap with death. Amnesty notes that Saudi Arabia has no written penal code for many offences and that judges rule on their own interpretation of Sharia. A citizen or migrant worker cannot read the statute and know the worst outcome of a post. Predictability is the minimum requirement of the rule of law, and this case fails it.
Why it matters beyond one defendant
Three points stand out for platform and speech policy.
- Migrant workers carry the highest risk. Amnesty says at least 94 of the 175 people executed in Saudi Arabia as of 5 October 2026 were foreign nationals. Workers who depend on an employer for their residence are least able to withstand a complaint, and in this case a screenshot of the comment reportedly reached the employer.
- Deletion and apology did not help. Sivarasa removed the comment and apologised publicly. Any content moderation model that treats user speech as grounds for criminal liability, rather than for removal, turns a platform comment into evidence.
- Proportionality is missing. Even the original five-year sentence and fine of roughly $800,000 for one comment is far out of scale with the harm alleged. A fine of that size would ruin most workers' families.
A better standard
A pro-innovation and pro-speech position does not require pretending that online harm does not exist. It requires that limits on speech be narrow, defined in advance and proportionate. Cybercrime law works best when it targets fraud, intrusion and coordinated abuse, and it should not make private offence at a comment a criminal matter. Narrowing Article 6 would be a direct step. Riyadh could delete the undefined references to 'religious values' and 'public morals', or add a requirement of incitement to violence. Saudi Arabia could also codify the penalties for speech offences, so no appeal court can raise a capped sentence to death without a written basis. Neither change needs to weaken the parts of the law that protect people from hacking and trafficking.
Sivarasa's appeal is still pending. The immediate demand is simple: quash the conviction and release him. The longer-term lesson is for any government writing online speech rules: wording that cannot be applied predictably will be applied harshly.