'Most powerful' Lebanese woman fired for 'liking' anti-Saudi Arabia tweet

Major Suzan Hajj Hobeiche was the head of the Cybercrime and Intellectual Property Bureau

Lebanon’s ‘most powerful’ woman Major Suzan Hajj Hobeiche, the head of the Cybercrime and Intellectual Property Bureau, has been sacked after she ‘liked’ a sarcastic tweet regarding Saudi Arabia’s royal decree allowing women to drive.

Hobeiche reportedly ‘liked’ Lebanese produced Charbel Khalil’s sarcastic joke on his Twitter account about the Saudi kingdom’s decision saying, “The news women were allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia was incomplete. They were allowed to drive cars only if they were booby-trapped,” he wrote in Arabic, Gulf News reported.

جنّوا نطّوا.... pic.twitter.com/g5Rdn7mFka

— Charbel Khalil (@khalil_charbel) September 29, 2017

The tweet earned ire from Lebanese people prompting Hobeiche, who had been dubbed the most powerful woman in Lebanon, to unlike the tweet and deactivate her account.



However, a Twitter user had already taken a screenshot of her ‘liking’ the controversial tweet and posted it widely on social media, which led to her firing.

Lebanese daily Al Nahar reported that the incident was used against her by those who did not want her to continue in the position she had been holding since 2012.



Hobeiche has a master’s degree in Computer Technology and a bachelor’s degree in Computer and Communication Engineering.

She has served as adviser for several anti-drug and women’s rights NGOs since 2005, and has been a coordinator at the Ministry of Social Affairs since 2004.

In a royal decree issued last Tuesday, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud ordered an end by next year of the ban on women drivers, a tradition that has limited women’s mobility and been seen by rights activists as an emblem of their suppression.