Saudi Arabia Condemned for Mass Execution of 37 People, Including Juveniles, After Unfair Trials

In an action con­demned by the United Nations and human rights groups as a fla­grant vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, Saudi Arabia behead­ed 37 peo­ple, includ­ing juve­nile offend­ers, in six sep­a­rate loca­tions on April 23, 2019. It was the nation’s largest mass exe­cu­tion since January 2016. Most of the peo­ple exe­cut­ed were mem­bers of the Shi’a Muslim minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty. The human rights advo­cates blast­ed Saudi offi­cials for tar­get­ing polit­i­cal­ly dis­fa­vored groups and dis­re­gard­ing inter­na­tion­al fair tri­al norms. At least three of those exe­cut­ed were minors at the time of their alleged crimes. Executing juve­nile offend­ers vio­lates two inter­na­tion­al agree­ments Saudi Arabia has agreed to, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention Against Torture.

Lynn Maalouf, Middle East Research Director at Amnesty International called the Saudi mass behead­ings a ​“grue­some indi­ca­tion of how the death penal­ty is being used as a polit­i­cal tool to crush dis­sent from with­in the country’s Shi’a minor­i­ty.” The Saudi Kingdom has long been accused of using the death penal­ty against polit­i­cal dis­si­dents, try­ing them in ter­ror­ism courts noto­ri­ous for the denial of due process. It drew crit­i­cism last year for using the threat of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment against peace­ful human rights activist Israa al-Ghomgham, as part of a crack­down on women’s rights activists.

According to Human Rights Watch, 25 of the 37 men exe­cut­ed were con­vict­ed in two mass tri­als that involved alle­ga­tions that author­i­ties had tor­tured pris­on­ers to obtain con­fes­sions. ​“Saudi author­i­ties will inevitably char­ac­ter­ize those exe­cut­ed as ter­ror­ists and dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East direc­tor at Human Rights Watch, ​“but the real­i­ty is that Saudi courts are large­ly devoid of any due process and many of those exe­cut­ed were con­demned based sole­ly on con­fes­sions they cred­i­bly say were coerced.” At one of the mass tri­als, 11 men were con­vict­ed of spy­ing for Iran, and at the oth­er, 14 were con­vict­ed of vio­lence com­mit­ted dur­ing anti-gov­ern­ment demon­stra­tions. The court reject­ed all alle­ga­tions of tor­ture and ignored defen­dants’ requests for video footage from the prison that could have shown the tor­ture. International human rights orga­ni­za­tion Reprieve said the three juve­niles were among those denied basic legal rights, and two of them were severe­ly beat­en to obtain confessions.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet released a state­ment on the exe­cu­tions, say­ing, ​“I strong­ly con­demn these shock­ing mass exe­cu­tions across six cities in Saudi Arabia yes­ter­day in spite of grave con­cerns raised about these cas­es by numer­ous UN Special Rapporteurs, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and oth­ers. … I urge the Government of Saudi Arabia to imme­di­ate­ly launch a review of its counter-ter­ror­ism leg­is­la­tion and amend the law to express­ly pro­hib­it the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty against minors.” Saudi Arabia has per­formed at least 104 exe­cu­tions so far in 2019, far out­pac­ing 2018, when it exe­cut­ed 149 peo­ple over the course of the year. Amnesty report­ed that only China and Iran car­ried out more exe­cu­tions than Saudi Arabia last year.