Saudi Arabia passed the milestone of 300 executions this year, surpassing its previous record of 196 executions in 2022. A third of the prisoners had been convicted for acts linked to drug trafficking.
A sad record. According to an AFP tally, based on a series of announcements from the Saudi Interior Ministry, the number of executions in Saudi Arabia has exceeded 300 this year alone.
Four people, convicted of common law crimes, were recently executed, bringing the number of executions to exactly 303 since the start of 2024, a rate of almost one per day.
According to the NGO Amnesty International, which has been counting executions in this Gulf monarchy since 1990 following a rigorous application of Islamic law, the kingdom is the country which has executed the most prisoners in the world in 2023, after China and the Iran.
However, last year, Saudi Arabia executed almost half as many people as in 2024: 170 in total, again according to an AFP count. Previously, the record number of executions in a single year in Saudi Arabia was 196 in 2022 and 192 in 1995, according to Amnesty.
“incomprehensible and inexplicable” executions
Taha al-Hajji, legal director of the NGO the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), described this year's executions as “incomprehensible and inexplicable”, speaking out against the “speed” at which they were carried out.
The head of communications for the human rights organization ALQST, Lina al-Hathloul, confirmed that the number of executions was “unprecedented”. “This grim record shows the Saudi authorities’ blatant disregard for the right to life and contradicts their own promises to limit the use of the death penalty,” she added.
Saudi Arabia has long been criticized for its use of the death penalty, which human rights groups say is excessive and at odds with the modern image the country strives to portray. Furthermore, in 2022, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, de facto leader of the country, told The Atlantic media that the kingdom had limited the death penalty to major crimes.
“The figures do not lie and completely contradict these statements,” stressed Taha al-Hajji.
thousands of executions in China
This year, 103 executed prisoners were convicted of drug-related charges, a third of the total figure. The kingdom ended a three-year moratorium in 2022 on the execution of drug offenders. 45 people were executed for “terrorism-related cases”.
According to Amnesty, the number of executions reached its highest level in almost a decade in 2023. In Iran, last year, at least 853 people were put to death but thousands would have been executed in China, thus remaining the country having carried out the greatest number of executions in the world.
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