Saudi Arabia carries out more than 300 executions in 2024, an all-time record

The previous record for this Middle Eastern country was 196, in 2022. For a Berlin-based NGO, these executions are “incomprehensible and inexplicable”.

Saudi Arabia has executed more than 300 convicts in 2024, according to an AFP count updated Tuesday, December 3, following announcements from the Saudi Interior Ministry. Four people, convicted of common law crimes, were put to death on Tuesday, the Saudi ministry announced in press releases, bringing the number of executions to 303 since the start of the year.

In 2023, Saudi Arabia had executed 170 people, according to an AFP count based on official data.

According to the NGO Amnesty International, which has been counting executions in this rich Gulf monarchy since 1990, the kingdom is the country which has executed the most prisoners in the world in 2023 after China and Iran, following a rigorous application of the Islamic law. Previously, the record number of executions in a single year in the country was 196 in 2022 and 192 in 1995, according to Amnesty.

Taha al-Hajji, legal director of the Berlin-based European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), called the 2024 executions a“incomprehensible and inexplicable”condemning the “vitesse” to which they were carried out. Human rights activists have already warned that Saudi Arabia could exceed 300 executions in a year, at the rate of almost one per day.