It is alleged that, by the time Wikipedia discovered the infiltration, and terminated over a dozen infiltrators from its editing system, the two editors had already been arrested by the Saudi government. They are currently serving a total of 40 years in prison for “swaying public opinion” and “violating public morals” in the oil kingdom.

The allegation of the arrests of the two Wikipedia editors was made by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an American-based non-governmental organization, which campaigns in favor of democratic reforms in the Middle East. The group was founded in 2020 by supporters of Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi journalist who was brutally killed by Saudi government agents in Turkey in 2018.

Citing sources from within Wikipedia, DAWN said last week that the online encyclopedia was infiltrated by Saudi government agents who posed as editors. Wikipedia editors are unpaid volunteers who are given access to the website’s editing platform and are thus able to approve or deny webpage edits made by other Wikipedia users. They can also interact with users and with other editors. Many editors are given supplemental administrative privileges that allow them to make substantial changes to Wikipedia’s content.

According to DAWN, the Saudi state infiltrated Wikipedia with volunteer editors. Their mission was reportedly to delete content that contained criticisms of Saudi Arabia from Wikipedia’s webpages, and to identify Wikipedia editors who generated such criticisms. The pro-democracy group claims that Wikipedia’s statement earlier this month, which announced the termination of 16 of its editors, came in response to the discovery of the infiltration by the Saudi government. The encyclopedia said on January 7 that it had terminated the editors for “engaging in conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the MENA region”, but it did not provide specific information.

The DAWN report claims that the Saudi infiltration resulted in the arrest imprisonment of two Wikipedia volunteers in Saudi Arabia. The group has called on the online encyclopedia to “take responsibility for the fact that its authorized editors are today languishing in prison for work they did on Wikipedia pages”. Wikipedia, however, denies these claims, saying that the role of the Saudi state in this case has not been proven. But in a subsequent statement, DAWN challenged Wikipedia to release specific details about its investigation into “conflict of interest editing” and to publish a complete list of all Wikipedia pages that were affected by the biased editors. Wikipedia has not responded yet to these calls.