'Gay' Saudi prison video gets man 5 years

Saudi man already jailed for alleged homosexuality sentenced to five more years after appearing in a YouTube video.

RIYADH: A Saudi man already jailed for alleged homosexuality was sentenced to five more years after appearing in a YouTube video of allegedly gay men inside a Saudi prison, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

The unidentified 27-year-old man was convicted by a Jeddah judge "for crimes including homosexuality, imitating women, and possessing pornographic video clips," the Saudi Gazette reported.

He was sentenced to five years in prison, 500 lashes, and a 50,000 riyal (13,333 dollar) fine, it said.

The case was linked to an apparently cellphone-filmed clip of several heavily made-up men supposedly inside Jeddah's Briman prison joking and pretending to be interviewed about their lives.

Although blocked by Saudi government Internet censors, the clip created a minor sensation in October as it spread around.

The prison chief denied it was filmed in the Briman facility, the newspaper said.

The Saudi Gazette said it was the same man who was sentenced to one year in jail in March after being arrested two months earlier for having posed in a humorous video as a policeman trying to seduce someone he arrests.

That video also appeared on YouTube and on The Young Turks, a popular American news show broadcast via YouTube.

Homosexuality is illegal under Saudi Arabia's strict Islamic sharia-based legal system, and theoretically is punishable by death, though this sentence is rarely imposed.