By Agence France Presse (AFP)
 
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 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) 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.
The prison chief denied that it was filmed in the Briman facility, according to the newspaper.

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. – AFP