There is a particular cruelty in watching a man fall victim to the very method he perfected. Recent press reports suggest that the United Arab Emirates — under its de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed — has sought to weaponise Washington’s emerging antisemitism legislation as a cudgel against Saudi Arabia — under its own de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman.
If true, it would be a striking manoeuvre. Yet the deeper irony is this: the habit of turning protective laws into punitive instruments is not an Emirati innovation. In the Saudi case, it has been cultivated, refined and normalised at home — and the chief craftsman has been Mohammed bin Salman himself.
Let me explain, before returning to what is said to have unfolded in Washington.
Since his ascent in 2015, the Saudi crown prince has, according to a steady accumulation of reporting and human rights documentation, presided over a legal culture in which statutes designed to safeguard society are reinterpreted to discipline it. The letter of the law is maintained; the spirit is quietly inverted. It is an old authoritarian trick, but in recent years it has acquired a modern, bureaucratic sheen — complete with specialised courts, sweeping definitions, and charges grand enough to swallow almost any critic whole.
Consider, first, the counter-terrorism framework. A society has every right — indeed a duty — to protect itself from violence. But when “terrorism” becomes elastic, it can be stretched to fit peaceful dissent. Under such conditions, a tweet can be made to resemble a bomb; an opinion can be treated like an insurgency. The point is not merely to punish one individual, but to teach the wider public that the state will reserve for itself the right to decide, retrospectively, what counts as danger.
Then there is the cybercrime law, ostensibly aimed at hacking, fraud, malicious interference and digital harm. Yet critics argue it has often been applied not to those who break into systems, but to those who speak in public; not to the makers of viruses, but to the makers of arguments. When the “crime” is expression, the keyboard becomes contraband.
Finally, there is the most theatrical charge of all: high treason. Treason, by its nature, is meant to describe an existential betrayal — the deliberate endangerment of a nation. But when ordinary contact with the outside world is recast as treachery, the charge becomes a trapdoor. A citizen who speaks to a journalist, a researcher, a human rights organisation, or a religious institution abroad can suddenly be portrayed as an agent of hostile powers. The accusation does not need to be proved in the ordinary sense; its function is to stain, isolate and frighten.
The human cost of this legal distortion is not theoretical. It is written on the lives of people whose names have become symbols of how the system can operate.
Take the case of the journalist Turki aljasser, reportedly executed after being accused under terrorism-related provisions. The allegation, as presented in public accounts, sits uneasily beside the description of his work: journalism is not terrorism, and commentary is not combat. Whatever one thinks of his politics, the idea that a writer’s words can be made to constitute “terror” reflects a concept of law as a weapon rather than a shield.
Or take Dr Salma al-Shehab, sentenced — according to widely reported accounts — to an extraordinarily long prison term under cybercrime charges, despite the underlying conduct being framed by supporters as peaceful online expression. In a functioning legal order, cybercrime is about unlawful intrusion and tangible digital harm; it is not a synonym for disagreement.
But perhaps the most chilling development is what critics describe as the use of violent criminal allegations — including the killing of security personnel — against peaceful opponents, in cases where the public is left with little clarity about the supposed victims: Who were these officers? What were their names? Where and when were they killed? Under what circumstances? Was there contemporaneous reporting of their deaths?
These are not petty procedural quibbles; they go to the heart of credibility. A state that claims a murder has occurred should, at minimum, be able to say who was murdered. And yet, as critics argue, the Saudi leadership appears to rely on a calculation: that outside scrutiny will be loud in principle but quiet in specifics — that foreign governments and influential voices will condemn in general terms, but will not press for basic particulars.
This calculation matters. Because if even one serious, authoritative interlocutor were to insist on the details — “You accuse this man of killing an officer; name the officer” — the accusation would no longer function as a slogan. It would become a claim that must withstand the daylight.
Now return to Washington.
Saudi Arabia is not, in any meaningful sense, an antisemitic state in the way the term is conventionally used in American politics. It has, over recent years, been cautious, calculating, and increasingly attentive to the language Western capitals wish to hear. Which is precisely why the reported attempt to invoke antisemitism legislation against it is so revealing: it demonstrates how any law, however morally freighted, can be turned into a geopolitical lever if the purpose is not justice but pressure.
And here, the irony turns sharp enough to draw blood.
For years, Mohammed bin Salman has been accused of using the legal system domestically in ways that detach it from its original intent: terrorism statutes used against non-terrorists; cybercrime laws used against non-criminal speech; treason charges used to punish ordinary contact with the world; grave allegations deployed without the transparent particulars that would allow independent assessment.
If, now, his regional rival adopts a similar method on an international stage — selecting a law designed to protect a vulnerable group and twisting it into a strategic instrument — then the crown prince is not witnessing an alien tactic. He is confronting his own logic, exported and reflected back at him.
This is the nature of poison: it does not respect the vanity of its maker. It circulates. It contaminates. It does not stay obediently in the cup reserved for one’s enemies or one’s subjects.
Those who normalise the instrumentalisation of law often imagine it can be contained — that it will serve their interests indefinitely, that it will remain a domestic tool wielded against domestic targets, and that the outside world will treat it as an internal matter. But the moment a method is proven effective, others will learn it. The moment the world tolerates a practice, it becomes a precedent. And the moment a ruler shows that laws can be emptied of meaning and refilled with convenience, he cannot complain when someone else offers him the same draught.
There is a lesson here, and it is not merely about palace rivalries or regional point-scoring. It is about the degradation of law itself. When justice is reduced to an instrument, no one is truly safe — not even the man holding the instrument.
In the end, the bitterest verdict is the simplest: the poison returns to its brewer.