Riyadh: The authorities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) have executed at least 100 people since the beginning of 2023, according to a report by Amnesty International.
Amnesty International described it as a “relentless killing spree” despite the monarchy’s promises to examine the application of the death penalty.
“In clear contrast to Saudi Arabia’s repeated promises to limit its use of the death penalty, the Saudi authorities have already executed 100 people this year, revealing their chilling disregard for the right to life,” Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa director said in a statement on Friday.
It added that this new wave of executions “raises serious concerns for the lives of young people on death row who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crimes.”
Amnesty International has also stated that it had documented several cases in which the authorities sentenced people to death “for anything from a few tweets on Twitter (currently X) to drug-related crimes, following grossly unfair trials that did not live up to international standards for human rights.”
In August alone, Saudi Arabia executed an average of four people per week, including one Pakistani man who was executed for drug smuggling.
The organization said its tally comes from reports published by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA), underlining that “the real number of executions may be higher.”
In 2022, Saudi Arabia ranked third in the world for the number of executions carried out. The number of recorded executions tripled from 65 in 2021 to 196 in 2022 in the Kingdom.
More than 1,000 death sentences have been carried out since King Salman took power in 2015, according to a report published earlier this year by the British-based Reprieve and the European-Saudi Organization for Human Rights.
