Editorial: You rarely hear calls to boycott Saudi Arabia for human rights abuses, as you do Israel

​A journalist in Saudi Arabia who was arrested in 2018 and convicted on terrorism and treason charges has been executed.

Turki Al-Jasser, who was aged in his 40s, was put to death on Saturday, according to the official Saudi Press Agency, after the death penalty was upheld by the nation’s top court.

Activist groups maintain that the charges against him were trumped up. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Saudi authorities maintained that Al-Jasser was behind a social media account on X, formerly Twitter, that levied corruption allegations against Saudi royals.

Al-Jasser was also said to have posted controversial tweets about militants and militant groups.

It was not clear where his trial took place or how long it lasted. Think about that and contrast it with every other western European country.

We all have an adult franchise, with open elections.

We all have a free press.

We all have open justice and courts.

And none of us have the death penalty. And even if we did, it would – as in America – be applied only after a transparent and entirely comprehensive legal process, with exhaustive appeals.

Never forget that the Saudis sent an official murder team to kill the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at their consulate in Istanbul in 2018,

Yet, farcically, Saudi Arabia came close to getting on the UN Human Rights Council that Queen’s University Belfast cited in its shameful boycott of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only country there with a properly free press.

But that is the way it is with many academics, and with the Irish Republic, which has encouraged that corrupt, human rights-abusing country South Africa in its legal case against Israel.

Where are the boycotts of Saudi Arabia or Iran or other appallingly run nations?