A macabre count. Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday January 2 the execution of six Iranians sentenced to death for drug trafficking, after a year marked by a record 338 executions. A figure which reminds us that political normalization should take a little more time in the Gulf monarchy, despite the billions spent trying to smooth out its image and reputation.
This report, established using data from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) defending human rights, represents a sharp increase compared to the 172 executions recorded in 2023 and the 196 recorded in 2022. According to Amnesty International, which counts since 1990 executions in this rich country following a rigorous application of Islamic law, the highest annual tolls until then were 196 executions in 2022 and 192 in 1995.
The kingdom is the country which executed the most prisoners in the world in 2023 after China and Iran, according to the NGO. In Riyadh, minors are sentenced to death and torture is used to obtain confessions, recall these same NGOs, despite the denials of the authorities, who explain that they respect human rights and act in this way to protect national security.
Among the 338 people executed in 2024 are 129 foreigners, another record, including 25 Yemenis, 24 Pakistanis, 17 Egyptians, 16 Syrians, 14 Nigerians, 13 Jordanians and seven Ethiopians. Sudanese, Indians, Afghans, a Sri Lankan, an Eritrean, a Bangladeshi and a Filipino were also executed.
Most had been convicted of drug trafficking. In 2024, 117 people were executed for drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia, including 85 foreigners. Saudi authorities launched a campaign to combat drugs in 2023, with a series of raids and arrests. The conservative Gulf monarchy is a major market for captagon, an amphetamine drug produced in Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN. Executions of traffickers have increased there since the end of a moratorium on this crime two years ago.
Saudi Arabia has carried out more than a thousand executions since King Salman came to power in 2015, according to a report by the London-based anti-death penalty organization Reprieve and the NGO European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), based in Berlin, published in early 2023.
In March 2022, 81 people were executed in a single day for “terrorist crimes”, sparking a wave of international indignation.
These executions no longer take place in public places, as was the case for decades. But their increasing number raises questions about the system, which is sufficiently opaque for political opponents to also be killed.
