Qatar-backed Twitter accounts called for Saudi protests, says minister

Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Culture and Information, Dr. Awwad al-Awwad, said that Qatar runs 23,000 fake Twitter accounts that have attacked Saudi Arabia, including an account run by Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih who resides in London.

Awwad explained that Qatar has supported accounts calling for demonstrations in Saudi Arabia on April 21 and on June 2, during the holy month of Ramadan, “and luckily, these plots failed.”

Awwad said that the Qatar-backed accounts on Twitter aimed to incite the Saudi public. “This is a national security issue that will not be tolerated,” he said.

His statements, posted on a Ministry of Culture and Information official Twitter account came after a content analysis undertaken on a number of accounts that attacked Saudi Arabia.

The findings were revealed by Saud al-Qahtani, Advisor of the Saudi Royal court and the General Supervisor of the Center for Studies and Information Affairs.

According to the study, the sources of these accounts attacking Saudi Arabia were as follows: 32% from Qatar, 28% from Lebanon, 24% from Turkey and 12% from Iraq.

The study also confirmed that 94% of the false accounts do not use a real profile picture, 4% of them use stolen images from social media sites and 2% were not verified.