Saudi man gets 10 years and 2,000 lashes over atheist tweets

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism in hundreds of Twitter posts.

Religious police in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing Koranic verses, accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teachings fuelled hostilities, the Al-Watan online daily reported.