Saudi man who took Molotov cocktails during Arab Spring arrested at 13

His case was first highlighted in an exclusive CNN report published in 2019, which detailed how Saudi authorities arrested Qureiris when he was 13, three years after he was accused of participating in a bike protest during the 2011 Arab Spring at the age of 10. After nearly four years in pre-trial detention, he was presented with a charge sheet recommending the death penalty.

Prosecutors alleged that Qureiris was part of an extremist terror group and committed violence during protests, including allegedly helping construct Molotov cocktails. Qureiris denied all of the allegations against him. He was 10 years old when he allegedly committed one of the acts on his charge sheet. He was charged with accompanying his activist brother, Ali Qureris, on a motorcycle ride to a police station in the eastern Saudi city of Awamiya, where Ali allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at the facility. In 2020, Saudi Arabia announced that it would abolish the death penalty for people who committed crimes as minors as part of a royal decree. A person who received a death sentence after being convicted of crimes they committed as a minor would receive a prison sentence of no more than 10 years in a juvenile detention facility, according to a statement from the state-backed Human Rights Commission HRC at the time. In 2019, Qureiris was sentenced to prison at the age of 18, though the Saudi government did not announce the charge or charges on which he was convicted. A source familiar with the matter told CNN at the time that he was officially spared the death penalty. CNN reached out to the Saudi government for comment. A source familiar with the matter told CNN in 2019 that Qureiris was due to be released in 2022, international pressure started mounting on the kingdom and multiple international rights groups condemned his detention after CNN reported on Qureiris' case. In February of 2019 the Austrian parliament voted to close a Saudi-backed center for interfaith dialogue in protest against the detention of Qureiris.