A 24-year-old Sri Lankan migrant worker, Anujan Sivarasa, has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia after being charged with making blasphemous comments about Islam and Prophet Muhammad on Facebook.
Mr Sivarasa, who was earlier sentenced to five years in jail and a fine of three million Saudi riyals, now faces execution after the court advanced the case under Sharia law.
Mr Sivarasa had made comments insulting Prophet Muhammad in Tamil on Facebook during religious disputes in Sri Lanka.
Despite deleting the post and apologising, he was arrested in July after the screenshot of his post went viral and reached his employer and Saudi Arabian authorities.
No official timeline for his execution has been published by the authorities, and it remains unclear when the sentence will be carried out.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government said it was making diplomatic efforts to secure a pardon for Mr Sivarasa.
It was also reported that the case brought together cross-religious support, as senior Buddhist and Hindu religious leaders submitted a memorandum to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the Presidential Secretariat, calling for urgent state intervention.
Mr Sivarasa’s family, however, said they had not been able to contact him since September 28.
Severe sentences for online speech are not new in Saudi Arabia. In 2021, Mohammed Al Ghamdi, a retired Saudi school teacher, was sentenced to death over his comments on multiple social media platforms.
An appeal court, however, commuted his death sentence to 30 years in prison following intense international outcry.
