Wikipedia admin jailed for 32 years after alleged Saudi spy infiltration

The Saudi Arabian government has been accused of trying to control information about the country on the internet. Ziyad al-Sofiani and Osama Khalid were arrested in Saudi Arabia in 2020 for "swaying public opinion" and "violating public morals", and were sentenced to up to eight years in prison. According to a statement released by the Wikimedia Foundation, there was no "infiltration" and that the admins of the site have no rank.

The Wikimedia Foundation concluded last month that 16 users in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region were banned from using the website because of their conflicts of interests. 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.

According to a joint statement from US-based rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and Beirut-based SMEX, sources close to Wikipedia and interviews with the jailed administrators confirmed that those "external parties" were government agents. Activists claim that these government agents acted as spies for Saudi authorities, and that they identified non compliant administrators like those jailed for editing Wikipedia entries to include information that Saudi officials did not approve of.

"It's wildly irresponsible for international organizations and businesses to assume their affiliates can ever operate independently of, or safely from, Saudi government control," the executive director said in a statement.

Ars did not get a response from either of the two companies. It's really important for Wikimedia to be transparent about what they have described as a conflict of interest among its editors, according to Whitson. She said that Wikimedia should give more transparency about the 16 users that they banned and that the safety precautions they're going to take to avoid further endangering Wikipedia editors in totalitarian states, because there's no denying that two of them are now in Saudi prisons. Wikimedia's global model of relying on editors based in totalitarian states, not just because it can endanger the editors, but also because it can lose its credibility, should be reconsidered.

There are discrepancies in the statement released by SMEX/DAWN and in a Guardian report, according to a Wikimedia spokesman.

The Saudi government was not found to have penetrated the highest ranks of the internet encyclopedia. There aren't any 'ranks' among Wikimedia admins. In our investigation, there was no mention of Saudis acting under the influence of the Saudi government. While we do not know where these volunteers actually reside, the bans of any volunteers who may have been Saudi were part of a larger action globally banning 16 editors.

Wikimedia's highest ranked editorial team in the region were banned after it was discovered that they were serving as agents for the Saudi government, according to activists. The banned users are listed on this page.

In their statement, DAWN and SMEX said that they were pointing to the user access levels of the high-ranking administrators of the site. Volunteers who are granted access to different tools are not employees of the encyclopedia. The admins have exclusive access to a number of tools to allow them to carry out certain functions on the website. Page deletion, page protection, blocking and unblocking users, and the ability to edit fully protected pages are covered by the tools.

In its December statement, the Wikimedia Foundation said that legal limitations might have prevented it from commenting on the arrests.

Activists are urging the foundation to make the results of its investigation public, and to subject them to independent review and analysis. warning labels should be put on pages for which admins could be at risk of prosecution by authoritarian regimes and Wikimedia should review its reliance on administrators in countries where freedom of speech is limited.

The groups have asked Saudi officials to stop their efforts to influence and control the content on the internet. The Saudi authorities have been asked to release those who have been sentenced for their role in posting on the internet.

In December, Wikimedia said it would explore ways to keep everyone safe and free to contribute to the projects. The foundation promised to find a global process to navigate safety challenges that allow such situations to be dealt with as transparent as possible while also avoiding risk to the safety of our users

If the foundation gives an update on any new actions it plans to take in the future, we will update this post.