Saudi Arabian Mass Execution of 81 People Draws Condemnation from U.N. High Commissioner, Rights Activists

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia exe­cut­ed 81 peo­ple on March 12, 2022, the largest mass exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern his­to­ry of the coun­try, elic­it­ing out­rage from United Nations and non-gov­ern­men­tal human rights organizations. 

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet issued a state­ment March 14 say­ing that the exe­cu­tions did not con­form to ​“inter­na­tion­al human rights and human­i­tar­i­an law and may amount to a war crime.” ​“I con­demn Saudi Arabia’s mass exe­cu­tion,” she said.

Saudi author­i­ties assert­ed that the pris­on­ers, who had been tried in spe­cial Saudi ter­ror­ism courts, had been able to exer­cise ​“their full rights under Saudi law.” A state­ment released by the Saudi Ministry of the Interior claimed that the pris­on­ers had com­mit­ted ​“mul­ti­ple heinous crimes that left a large num­ber of civil­ians and law enforce­ment offi­cers dead,” includ­ing ​“the mur­der­ing of inno­cent men, women and chil­dren” and ​“alle­giance to for­eign terrorist organisations.” 

However, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights report­ed that 41 mem­bers of the minor­i­ty Shia Muslim com­mu­ni­ty who had tak­en part in anti-gov­ern­ment protests had been exe­cut­ed, as well as sev­en Yemeni nation­als and one Syrian detained in con­nec­tion with the Saudi government’s mil­i­tary inter­ven­tions in their coun­tries. The European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) said that it found mul­ti­ple cas­es in which defen­dants had been denied access to a lawyer, were tor­tured into sign­ing con­fes­sions, and been unable to com­mu­ni­cate with the outside world.

ESOHR direc­tor Ali Adubusi said the charges against many of the accused involved ​“not a drop of blood” and none of the cas­es involved charges that war­rant­ed exe­cu­tion under Saudi Arabia’s pub­lic cri­te­ria for the death penal­ty. The orga­ni­za­tion said it was unable to track the charges in all of the cas­es because of a lack of trans­paren­cy in the Saudi jus­tice sys­tem and gov­ern­ment efforts to intim­i­date fam­i­ly mem­bers of the accused. ​“These exe­cu­tions are the oppo­site of jus­tice,” Adubusi said.

The exe­cu­tions came as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been tout­ing social reforms in the Kingdom, includ­ing pledges by the Saudi gov­ern­ment to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for drug offens­es and to no longer exe­cute juve­nile offend­ers. Each time, the promis­es were fol­lowed by addi­tion­al exe­cu­tions. Following the mass exe­cu­tion, Soraya Bauwens, the deputy direc­tor of the London-based human rights orga­ni­za­tion, Reprieve, said: ​“The world should know that when Mohammed bin Salman promis­es reform, blood­shed is bound to follow.”

High Commissioner Bachelet said U.N. mon­i­tor­ing ​“indi­cates that some of those exe­cut­ed were sen­tenced to death fol­low­ing tri­als that did not meet fair tri­al and due process guar­an­tees, and for crimes that did not appear to meet the most seri­ous crimes thresh­old, as required under inter­na­tion­al law.” Reprieve was more blunt, call­ing the mass exe­cu­tion a ​“bru­tal dis­play of impunity.” 

Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International​’s deputy region­al direc­tor for the Middle East and North Africa, said ​“This exe­cu­tion spree is all the more chill­ing in light of Saudi Arabia’s deeply flawed jus­tice sys­tem, which metes out death sen­tences fol­low­ing tri­als that are gross­ly and bla­tant­ly unfair, includ­ing bas­ing ver­dicts on ​‘con­fes­sions’ extract­ed under tor­ture or oth­er ill-treat­ment.“ The mass exe­cu­tion, Amnesty said in a web post, ​“sig­nals an appalling esca­la­tion in Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penalty.”

Human Rights Watch issued a news release stat­ing that “[r]ampant and sys­temic abus­es in Saudi Arabia’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem sug­gest it is high­ly unlike­ly that any of the men received a fair tri­al.“ The organization’s deputy Middle East direc­tor, Michael Page, called the Saudi mass exe­cu­tions ​“a bru­tal show of its autocratic rule.“

“Today’s unprece­dent­ed shock­ing mass exe­cu­tions in what we know to be sham tri­als under sham laws in Saudi Arabia should dis­pel any mythol­o­gy about [Crown Prince bin Salman’s] trans­form­ing into some kind of ​‘reformer,’” Sarah Leah Whiston, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the non­prof­it Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) said in a March 12 press advi­so­ry. DAWN was found­ed by the late jour­nal­ist Jamal Khashoggi to pro­mote democ­ra­cy, the rule of law, and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa. Khashoggi was mur­dered and dis­mem­bered by Saudi assas­sins after being lured to the Saudi con­sulate in Istanbul in 2018. U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies con­clud­ed that bin Salman ordered the killing. 

ESOHR report­ed that this was fourth mass exe­cu­tion by Saudi author­i­ties in the past decade. The March 2022 mass exe­cu­tion, ESOHR said, ​“was pre­ced­ed by two mas­sacres in 2016” in which a total of 47 peo­ple were behead­ed, and the behead­ings of 37 peo­ple in 2019. The March 2022 mass exe­cu­tion was report­ed­ly the largest in mod­ern Saudi his­to­ry, sur­pass­ing the January 1980 mass exe­cu­tion of 63 mil­i­tants con­vict­ed of seiz­ing the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979.

The mass exe­cu­tions exceed­ed in one day the 67 exe­cu­tions Saudi author­i­ties car­ried out in all of 2021 and the 27 Saudi exe­cu­tions in 2020. Amnesty said the exe­cu­tions brought Saudi Arabia’s total of exe­cu­tions to 92 so far in 2022.

The Saudi inte­ri­or min­istry did not dis­close the man­ner in which the gov­ern­ment con­duct­ed the executions.