Claim: A video shows people in Saudi Arabia protesting against the ruling Al Saud royal family for giving in to US President Donald Trump and demanding the rulers “leave the government” as they “have bowed [their] head to America”.
Fact: The video shows the mediation of a murder case between two tribes, not a protest against the Saudi government.
On 22 May 2025, Soch Fact Check received a video showing two groups of men in traditional Saudi Arabian attire apparently arguing while standing on either side of a red barricade.
The video is accompanied by the following caption:
“موجودہ حکومت کے خلاف عرب میں احتجاج شروع ہو گیا حکومت چھوڑ دو تم نہیں سنبھال سکتے تم نے امریکہ کے أگے سر جھکایا ہوا ہے ساری امت مسلمہ ہم پہ تھو تھو کررہی ہے تمہاری وجہ سے ۔ان شاءاللہ أل سعود کا سورج غروب ہونے کے قریب۔وہابی علماء بھی حکومت کے خلاف احتجاج کرنے والوں کو مطمٸن کرنے میں ناکام۔
[Protests have started in [Saudi] Arabia against the current government. Leave the government, you cannot handle it, you have bowed your head to America. The entire Muslim Ummah is spitting on us because of you. InshaAllah, the sun of Al Saud is about to set. Wahabi scholars also failed to appease those protesting against the government.]”
The message Soch Fact Check received is marked “Forwarded many times,” which means it was shared through a chain of five or more chats.
Trump’s Saudi visit
US President Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia on 13 May 2025, marking the “first major diplomatic international visit” of his second presidential term, and was greeted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known as MbS, who threw him “a royal welcome”.
The two leaders exchanged warm words, with the US president saying, “I really believe we like each other a lot,” and MbS addressing him “my dear President Trump” and playing the campaign anthem — “God Bless the USA.”
The Republican’s objectives for the visit, according to an Al Jazeera report, were “securing major economic deals and making diplomatic progress on issues that impact the region”. This turned out to be a success as he participated in a US-Saudi Investment Forum and the two countries signed a weapons deal worth nearly $142 billion.
The arms deal, according to Reuters, was “the largest defense cooperation agreement” undertaken by the US and focuses on “areas including air and missile defense, air force and space advancement, maritime security and communications”, as per a White House fact sheet.
The Trump administration has also mentioned that the Kingdom “will invest $600bn in the United States”, Al Jazeera reported.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check observed that the video does not appear to show a protest or demonstration but some type of debate or altercation.
Reverse-searching keyframes from the viral video, we were led to the TikTok account @alketabi (archive), which appears to have posted multiple clips from the same location; some of these can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
According to Bellingcat’s TikTok Date Extractor, the first video showing the same location and group of people was posted on 11 May 2025, indicating that the incident predates Trump’s arrival in Saudi Arabia.
We then reached out to Bara’a Al-Ma’any — a fact-checker with the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism’s (ARIJ) initiative, the Arab Fact-Checkers Network (AFCN) — for help in identifying what’s being shown in the video, as well as the commentary.
Al-Ma’any explained that the video “has nothing to do about protests” against Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud or the royal family and that the man seen in it — someone referred to as Salman — is apparently a negotiator. The clips shows a mediation, a common practice between Saudi tribes, when the family of a murderer goes to meet the victim’s tribe asking for forgiveness or to offer diya, a term for financial compensation.
The fact-checker also explained that according to religious and tribal laws, the victim’s family is given three options: Qisas, or retribution, meaning the execution of the murderer as punishment; Diya, or blood money, indicating the payment of a financial settlement before pardoning the murderer, and forgiving the murderer without requesting any compensation.
“The person referred to as ‘Ibn Salman’ is not the Saudi Crown Prince but rather an influential tribal figure who is given the title ‘Sheikh’, indicating that he is a leader or chief within his tribe. His name is Ali bin Salman Al-Kitab Al-Muqrahi and the story revolves around a tribal murder case between two tribes,” Al-Ma’any told Soch Fact Check.
“It certainly involves a murder case. The visible gathering, where men are seen throwing their Shemaghs and Agal (traditional headgear) to the ground, represents the tribe of the perpetrators. On the opposite side stands the family of the victim,” he added.
Therefore, it appears that the aforementioned links to posts from @alketabi are some of the updates from the mediation process.
Soch Fact Check concludes that the video does not show Saudis protesting against their government.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that the video and the accompanying false claim has gone significantly viral on social media.
It was shared here, here, here, and here on Facebook, where it was viewed over 3.9 million, 805,000, 341,000, and 52,000 times, respectively.
The clip was posted here, here, and here on Instagram and here on TikTok.
Indian media outlet Gulistan News Channel published a video report reiterating the false claim and posted it on Facebook and YouTube, where it garnered over 751,000 and 12,000 views, respectively.
The same news report was uploaded independently by other social media users here and here, where it was viewed over 649,000 and 45,000 times, respectively.
Conclusion: The video does not show a protest against the Saudi government; rather, it depicts a mediation process of a murder case between two tribes.
Background image in cover photo: ksamofa
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