Monday 18 November 2024
Islamabad (News International. DW New. November 18, 2024) According to the data of the AFP news agency, Saudi Arabia has executed more than 100 foreign citizens so far this year. On Saturday, a Yemeni citizen was beheaded.
Saudi Arabia's official press agency reported the latest execution, in the southwestern region of Najran, on Saturday of a Yemeni national accused of smuggling drugs into the Gulf kingdom.
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With this sentence, 101 foreigners have been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia so far in 2024. The AFP report added that this figure is three times higher than the figures for 2023 and 2022, when authorities executed 34 foreign nationals in one year.
According to this calculation, the death sentences in the country have increased almost three times this year.
Among the foreigners who were sentenced to death this year, the maximum number of 21 people belonged to Pakistan. 20 from Yemen, 14 from Syria, 10 from Nigeria, nine from Egypt, eight from Jordan and seven from Ethiopia were sentenced to death.
Three each from Sudan, India and Afghanistan, while one each from Sri Lanka, Eritrea and the Philippines were sentenced to death.
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The FP news agency previously reported in September that Saudi Arabia as a whole carried out the most executions in more than three decades this year, surpassing 196 in 2022 and 192 in 1995. Large numbers were also left behind.
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Acceleration of execution of death sentences
According to AFP, executions in the kingdom are continuing at a rapid pace and as of Sunday, the total number of those executed this year had reached 274.
The Berlin-based European-Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) said in a statement that executions this year have already broken records.
"This is the largest number of executions of foreigners in one year," said Taha Al-Hajji, the group's legal director. "Saudi Arabia has never executed 100 foreigners in one year."
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Saudi Arabia has been under constant criticism over its practice of capital punishment, which has been strongly criticized by human rights groups.
According to Amnesty International, the oil-rich country carried out the third-highest number of executions in the world after China and Iran in 2023.
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Saudi Arabia previously banned the death penalty for drug offenders, but lifted the three-year ban in 2022 and began implementing the death penalty for drug-related crimes.
Diplomats and human rights activists say foreign defendants are routinely denied the right to access court documents and face many obstacles to a fair trial.
ESOHR legal director Taha Al-Hajji says that such suspects are not only often "victims of major drug traffickers" but also "subject to violations from the moment of their arrest until their execution."
The ever-increasing number of executions has also rendered meaningless the statements of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who told The Atlantic in 2022 that his kingdom did not execute murder cases or when a person was executed. Abolished the death penalty in cases other than life-threatening.
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