According to an AFP count, Saudi Arabia has carried out at least 100 executions this year, including the death of two individuals found guilty of terrorism-related offenses, the interior ministry announced on Saturday.
According to the ministry’s social media release, the two Saudi nationals were put to death for their “terrorism”-related offenses, which included visiting training camps overseas where they learned how to make bombs and joined a terrorist organization.
“After they were referred to the competent court, a ruling was issued confirming the charges against them and ordering their execution as a punishment,” stated the statement. Of the 100 prisoners put to death this year, 59 were found guilty of drug-related offenses, 43 of them were foreign nationals, according to an AFP count. Advocacy organizations criticized the deaths.
The human rights group Reprieve’s Jeed Basyouni said in a statement that “Global partners have shown a readiness to ignore Saudi Arabia’s serious human rights abuses while it seeks to present itself as a constructive diplomatic player.”
“The repercussions? After 345 executions last year, there have been 100 executions and counting since January, with almost half of them for non-lethal drug-related charges, Basyouni continued. Following a nearly three-year break, Saudi authorities resumed executions for drug-related offenses toward the end of 2022.
At least 338 individuals were put to death in the past year, close to double the 2023 total of 170 and significantly more than the previous known record of 196 in 2022, according to an earlier AFP count. Last month, Amnesty International condemned what it described as an “alarming surge” in the application of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia after a series of executions tied to “drug-related crimes.”. Saudi Arabia is among the world’s highest consumers of the death penalty.
The beheading-prone kingdom drew an international tide of outrage in March 2022 when it executed 81 people on a single day. The country, dominated by de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is pouring huge sums of money into tourist infrastructure and high-profile sporting events such as the 2034 World Cup as it seeks to diversify its hydrocarbon-dependent economy.
Even with its modernization ambitions, though, campaigners claim Saudi Arabia’s insistence on not jettisoning the death penalty, in defiance of global criticism, betrays the vision of a more liberalizing, tolerant nation that is at the center of Prince Mohammed’s Vision 2030 reform strategy. The death penalty is justifiably deployed, the Saudi authorities insist, in order to uphold public security and only applied once all mechanisms of appeal are exhausted.