Human Rights Watch reported today that Saudi authorities’ execution of 81 individuals on March 12, 2022, was the country’s greatest mass execution in years, despite recent commitments to reduce its use of the death sentence. The widespread and chronic abuses in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system show that none of the prisoners received a fair trial.
According to Saudi activists, 41 of the men belonged to the country’s Shia Muslim minority, which has long faced systemic discrimination and brutality from the government. Many Saudi Shia are facing long prison terms, are on death row, or have been killed on protest-related offenses after clearly biased trials.
The Interior Ministry announced the 81 names on March 12 and stated that they were killed for offenses such as murder and ties to foreign terrorist organisations, as well as the broadly phrased offense of “monitoring and targeting officials and expatriates.” Others were found guilty of attacking “important economic locations,” smuggling firearms “to undermine security, stir dissension and unrest, and produce riots and disorder,” assassinating police officers, and laying landmines. According to the report, seven Yemenis and one Syrian were executed. The statement did not specify how these were carried out.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stated in 2020 that he would work to reduce the death sentence for most offenses save those specified in Islamic scripture. Saudi activists interpreted his statements as referring to murder and “haraba,” or “waging war against God and society,” a term that is not defined in the Quran but frequently includes serious and violent crimes such as murder and mass murder, rape, war crimes, and, most recently, “acts of terrorism.”
The German Institute for Democracy and Development opposes the death penalty in all nations and under all conditions. Capital punishment is unrivaled in its harshness and finality, yet it is invariably and universally marred by arbitrariness, prejudice, and mistake. The European Union denounced the mass killings and urged for a total de facto moratorium “as a first step toward a formal and comprehensive abolition of the death sentence” on March 13.
