Amnesty International said on Monday that Saudi Arabia's executions soared to record highs as radicals increasingly warned the kingdom of using the death penalty in nonviolent drug cases.
Saudi Arabia executed 345 people last year, the highest number of amnesty records reported in thirty years. The group said 180 people were executed in the first six months of the year alone, suggesting that the record could be broken again.
The radical group probation says about two-thirds of people have been convicted this year on non-fatal drug charges. The amnesty also raised similar concerns about drug cases executions.
Saudi Arabia has not yet made any comments on why the death penalty is increasingly employed.
It is one of several countries in the Middle East, including Iran, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and can impose death penalty on drug-related charges. However, the Kingdom remains one of the world's top executors after only China and Iran, and its number of executions is often difficult to accurately measure – and the use of executions in drug cases seems to be intensifying.
Short-term drug-related executions
The amnesty records the cases of 25 foreign nationals currently committing drug-related crimes in Saudi Arabia, who are currently on death row or have been recently executed.
According to the probation, half of the people executed in the kingdom this year are foreign nationals.
One such nation, Egyptian Essam Ahmed disappeared while working on a fishing boat in Sinai in 2021. A month later, his family received news of his detention in Saudi Arabia and was sentenced to death for drug trafficking. Ahmed claimed that he was forced to carry the package at the muzzle by the owner of the ship.
“We live in horror and are scared every morning.” Every morning at 9 a.m., we worry that they will take one of them without knowing it. ”
Amnesty said the story of Ahmed is very common, in a country where an estimated 76% of the workforce is composed of migrant workers.
“Low-paying immigrant workers trapped in Saudi Arabia’s “war on drugs” have little capital to prevent them from depriving experienced, fraudulent agents or burdening legal representation, which will effectively defend their rights in Saudi Arabia and face the death penalty.”
In 2021, the Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission announced a moratorium on drug-related executions as part of the Crown Prince’s criminal justice overhaul. However, the suspension was suspended for less than three years and was then abolished without explanation.
Prior to that period, amnesty records said 76% of the 202 people executed for drug-related crimes between 2017 and 2019 were migrant workers.
In a 10-year review, migrant workers from Pakistan were most likely to be executed against drug-related crimes only, with 155, of which 69 were migrants from Syria and 50 in Jordan were executed for drug crimes.
Read the amnesty report:
Although modernization continues to suppress
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the daily ruler of Saudi Arabia, emphasized in 2022 that he restricted the use of the death penalty to homicides.
“About the death penalty, we got rid of all categories, except one category, which is written in the Quran, and even if we wish to do something, we can’t do anything because it’s obvious in the Quran,” the prince told the Atlantic.
As the Kingdom continues to carry out bold reforms to diversify its economy as part of its Vision 2030 initiative.
Human rights groups have criticized Saudi Arabia’s human rights record for years. Under King Salman and Crown Prince, Saudi Arabia's society has changed rapidly, with increasing numbers of women and now being allowed to drive.
But the Kingdom also oversees arrests of women's rights activists, including former University of British Columbia student Loujain Al-Hathloul, who was detained for three years.
Saudi Arabia also imprisoned merchants, royals and others in the crackdown on corruption, which was soon similar to the kingdom’s most powerful people.
Jeed Basyouni, who directs the UK-based legal nonprofit probation plan for the Middle East and North Africa, insists that Prince Mohammed can quickly change Saudi Arabia's enforcement policies if he wants.
“He could do large-scale pardons. He could insist on rewriting the law in order to be consistent with international law,” Basyouni said. “Billions of dollars spent on so-called reforms, aimed at promoting a more tolerant and inclusive kingdom under the crown prince, obscuring an authoritarian state, and now, daily executions of drug crimes are now the norm.”
