July 23, 2014
Saudi Arabian Gay Man Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison, 450 Lashes Over Tweets
Jason St. Amand READ TIME: 1 MIN.
A court in Saudi Arabia recently sentenced a gay man to three years in prison and 450 lashings for using Twitter to attempt to meet another man, Dubai's English-language news site Gulf News reports.
The 24-year-old man, who remains nameless, was arrested after making several tweets asking for "homosexual relations and expressing his readiness to meet gay men," Gulf News writes. Saudi Arabia's religious police, or the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, were then notified of the man's tweets and they were able to apprehend him after they set him up by using an undercover agent.
The authorities took his cell phone and searched it, finding a number of "immoral" pictures. This sparked the Commission to hand off the case to the public prosecution.
The prosecutor requested a harsh punishment for the images found on the phone on charges of debauchery.
The man admitted to using his Twitter account to talk with other gay men.
Homosexuality is banned in Saudi Arabian and other Gulf Cooperation Council states, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
