He deleted a Facebook comment. Saudi Arabia sentenced him to death.

Here at Second-Hand News, we tend to think the appropriate response to a Facebook comment is another Facebook comment. Perhaps a block. Maybe even the radical step of closing the bloody app.

Anojan Sivarasa’s case offers a horrifying alternative. The 24-year-old Sri Lankan migrant worker faces a death sentence in Saudi Arabia over a comment deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. Amnesty International says he deleted the comment and published a video apology. An appeal court nevertheless increased his sentence to death on 17 September.

A young man apologised for words. A state responded with the prospect of killing him. We appear to have rather different ideas about what constitutes an outrage.

It began with a dog being kicked

According to LADbible’s account, drawing on BBC reporting, the online row followed a video from a Hindu pilgrimage in Sri Lanka. The footage reportedly showed a Muslim man kicking a dog who had been accompanying the pilgrims.

During the argument that followed, another user allegedly insulted a Hindu deity. Sivarasa responded with comments insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Although he subsequently deleted his comment and apologised, screenshots were circulated to his employer and Saudi authorities. He was arrested in July.

Somewhere in that sequence, the suffering of an actual animal became the opening act in an argument over injured religious feelings. The result is an actual human being facing death. Anyone looking for a demonstration of moral priorities going completely arse-over-tit can probably stop looking.

Five years was apparently insufficient

Amnesty’s account puts his original punishment at five years in prison and a fine of three million Saudi riyals, imposed under the anti-cybercrime law. LADbible reports that prosecutors sought to have him tried under Sharia law instead. The appeal court granted that request and imposed death. Amnesty also says he had no access to a lawyer between his arrest and initial sentencing.

Even the starting point was grotesque: years of a young man’s life taken away over a comment. The escalation makes it worse beyond parody. A government with police, prisons and courts at its disposal has managed to cast a deleted Facebook post as something requiring a human life in payment.

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You do not have to approve of Sivarasa’s words to oppose his sentence. You do not even have to like him. The right to stay alive should not depend on winning a politeness competition, and an apology should not be an application for permission to keep breathing.

The fight to bring him home

Sri Lanka is pursuing legal and diplomatic efforts to overturn the sentence. The Daily Mirror’s report of the foreign minister’s 7 October statement to parliament says Sri Lankan lawyers and Saudi legal advisers were preparing a Supreme Court appeal.

There is also a clemency campaign. Daily FT reports that MPs from Muslim and Tamil parties jointly appealed to Saudi Arabia to spare him. People from different religious and political backgrounds have found common ground in the fairly elementary proposition that this young man should live.

Amnesty is calling for his conviction and death sentence to be overturned and for his immediate, unconditional release.

Where the case stands: Sivarasa has been sentenced to death. The reports reviewed for this story do not announce an execution date. Efforts to appeal and seek clemency are continuing. This account was checked on 9 October 2026.

Sivarasa should be able to go home. Nobody should have to beg a government to recognise that a deleted comment is not worth a human life. If the authorities want to demonstrate moral authority, sparing the man they have condemned would be a useful place to start.

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