Jordan Resumes Executions After 9‑Year Hiatus with the Hanging of 6 Men

Three of the exe­cut­ed indi­vid­u­als were con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism-relat­ed charges for two sep­a­rate inci­dents, and three indi­vid­u­als were con­vict­ed of drug-relat­ed charges for three sep­a­rate inci­dents. Two peo­ple, Mahmoud Nayef Mousa and Anas Anwar Adel Saleh, were exe­cut­ed for form­ing a ter­ror­ist cell dubbed the ​“Salt Cell” in 2018, which result­ed in the deaths of six secu­ri­ty forces. The third, Ibrahim Mansour Mohammad, was con­vict­ed for a ter­ror­ist attack that killed a senior offi­cer in the Jordan Armed Forces in 2022. According to the state news agency, three high-lev­el drug traf­fick­ers — Hamza Mahmoud Mansour (2014), Khaled Assaf Fayez (2017), and Ihab Maher Kamal (2018) — were exe­cut­ed for resist­ing secu­ri­ty forces or law enforce­ment offi­cers dur­ing raids, result­ing in their deaths. 

Jordan’s mass exe­cu­tion of six men marks the resump­tion of exe­cu­tions after a nine-year hia­tus. The country’s last exe­cu­tions were March 4, 2017, when 15 men were hanged. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), five of those 15 men were con­vict­ed of mur­der charges, while ten oth­ers were con­vict­ed of secu­ri­ty-relat­ed charges imposed by the State Security Court. In response to Jordan’s 2026 exe­cu­tions, HRW reit­er­at­ed its oppo­si­tion to the use of spe­cial courts to try secu­ri­ty-relat­ed crimes, explain­ing that these courts are ​“fre­quent­ly autho­rized by law to con­duct tri­als in a man­ner that restricts the rights of defen­dants beyond what is per­mis­si­ble under inter­na­tion­al human rights law.” 

This is not the first time Jordan has resumed exe­cu­tions after a long hia­tus. On December 21, 2014, Jordan exe­cut­ed 11 peo­ple for mur­der, end­ing an unof­fi­cial eight-year mora­to­ri­um from 2006 – 2014. At the time, HRW Middle East Director Sarah Leah Whitson char­ac­ter­ized the event as ​“back­slid­ing on human rights.” She stat­ed: ​“With these exe­cu­tions, Jordan los­es its stand­ing as a rare pro­gres­sive voice on the death penal­ty in the region.” 

Relative to oth­er coun­tries in North Africa and Southwest Asia, Jordan has used the death penal­ty min­i­mal­ly, though it has con­tin­ued to impose new death sen­tences while exe­cu­tions have been paused. According to Amnesty International, the nation has imposed at least 31 death sen­tences over the last five years: 6 in 2025, 7 in 2024, 3 in 2023, 4 in 2022, and 11 in 2021.¹ During this same peri­od, Egypt imposed at least 2,341 death sen­tences, and Iraq imposed at least 549 death sentences.