PremiumActivists allege that the Saudi administration infiltrated Wikipedia and arrested the two officials (in 2020) in a bid to control the contents of the site. They also recruited the organization's highest-ranked administrators to serve as government agents.
In 2020, two high-ranking Wikipedia administrators - Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani - were charged with "swaying public opinion" and "violating public morals." They were sentenced to several years in prison, with recent reports indicating that the duo had contributed information deemed critical about the persecution of political activists in the country.
According to activists, the Saudi government has taken several steps to control information about the country and prosecute those who contributed critical information about political detainees. The Wikimedia Foundation has however disputed the activists' report that claims to have found evidence the Saudi Arabian government "infiltrated" its team in the region.
Beirut-based digital rights group SMEX and Washington-based Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) founded by late journalist Jamal Khashoggi allege that the administration arrested the two officials in a bid to control the contents of the site. The claim that the government also recruited Wikipedia's highest-ranked administrators to serve as government agents.
"It's despicable but entirely predictable that the Saudi government has prosecuted Saudis merely for posting content about the government's human rights abuses. But Wikimedia also needs to take responsibility for the fact that its authorized editors are today languishing in prison for work they did on Wikipedia pages," said Raed Jarrar, DAWN's advocacy director.
Wikipedia relies on varying ranks of volunteer administrators and editors who are authorised to update information. Administrators have exclusive authorization to use tools to edit, delete, and protect content pages (meaning no one else can edit them), and to block and unblock lower-ranking users and editors.
Last year in December, after the investigation, Wikimedia had incidentally terminated all of its administrators in Saudi Arabia. The activists' report claims that the parent company also announced that it had banned 16 users for "conflict of interest editing" following an internal investigation it had commenced in January 2022.
"There are material inaccuracies in the statement included from SMEX/DAWN. There was no finding in our investigation that the Saudi government 'infiltrated'" Wikipedia and influenced users," the US-based Foundation said in a statement later Thursday.
The organisation however acknowledged that some users "who may have been Saudi" were among those it has banned.
(With inputs from agencies)