They were executed for “smuggling hashish” into the country, Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry announced. Tehran summoned the Saudi ambassador after the execution.
Published on 01/01/2025 18:05
Updated on 01/01/2025 18:16
Reading time: 1min
Saudi Arabia has executed six Iranians sentenced to death for drug trafficking, the official Saudi press agency SPA announced on Wednesday (January 1st). The six condemned men were executed in Dammam, in the east of the kingdom, for having “smuggled hashish” in the country, announced the Ministry of the Interior in a press release published by SPA, without specifying the date of the execution.
In 2024, 117 people were executed for drug trafficking in the country, according to an AFP count based on official data. Saudi authorities launched a campaign to combat drugs in 2023, with a series of raids and arrests. Executions of traffickers have increased there since the end of a moratorium on this crime two years ago. Saudi Arabia is the country that executed the most prisoners in the world in 2023 after China and Iran, according to Amnesty International.
After the execution of six Iranian nationals, Tehran summoned the Saudi ambassador. Diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, suspended for seven years, resumed in March 2023 after a rapprochement negotiated under the aegis of China. In 2016, Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran after its embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad were attacked by demonstrators protesting the execution of Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr in the kingdom.
