Saudi Arabia has executed 213 people so far in 2024, more than it has in any other calendar year on record, as the kingdom competes for a seat at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). According to the London-based rights group Reprieve, which documents the death penalty worldwide, the largest recorded figure prior to this year was 196 in 2022, followed by 184 in 2019.
“As the world’s attention fixates on horror elsewhere in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is clearing death row with a bloodbath,” Reprieve’s deputy director, Harriet McCulloch, told MEE.
“The Kingdom smashed its own grim record for most people executed in a year in the first nine months of 2024,” she added. “With 213 executions and counting, death row prisoners are at greater risk than ever before, their families desperately awaiting news of their fate in the news.”
The executions are taking place under the government of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, the kingdom’s prime minister and de facto leader, who pledged in a 2018 interview to minimise capital punishment.
And yet Iran is America’s greatest adversary in the Axis of Evil somehow.
With Israel and Saudi Arabia the USA certainly has some lovely allies.
Don’t forget the USA
Was Guinness there to record it and make it official?
Yes, but they have a thing about journalists reporting about em …
Eh, question… what’s their charges? Murder? Treason?
The official human rights authority in the kingdom, the Saudi Human Rights Commission, also falsely claimed that child defendant Mustafa al-Darwish, who was sentenced to death for protest-related offences, was over 19 at the time of the crimes.
But Reprieve and ESOHR provided evidence that proved he was in fact under 18. Darwish was executed on 15 June 2021 despite the evidence.
What…
MBS should be stuffed into a suitcase and cast into the ocean
Hmmm wishing someone death in opposition to a post talking about death penalty… HHMMMM…
The busiest man in Saudi Arabia
I’m sure they are all violent criminals and none of them are political opposition figures calling for a modicum of representative democracy right?
What I know is that people who are politically active in a way deemed disruptive by the monrachy are sentenced to 10 or 20 years prison rather than capital punishment.
They execute anyone who they consider to be an ‘enemy of the state’ all the time. They call political dissent ‘terrorism’ and simply murder people.
I know a little about this than I should as I know people who have been in the system and got all range of sentences. The only people I know who were executed were because they leaked classified military information to Iran-affiliates. Regardless of their motives and justifications, no state would tolerate that. But the government would never say why publicly and it will be reported as another possibly unjustified execution, only who know know. The people who were just outspoken got lengthy prison sentences, not fair, but it is what it is.
My politics don’t always go well with the government so I keep in mind what my parents told me at 6: 1. don’t talk politics 2. don’t talk religion 3. all phones are monitored. Though my main objection is in its international affairs and apathy towards regional causes. Domestic policy reflects the current culture and it can’t be helped.
If I lived there I able wouldn’t say anything. Of course they are tapping phones using Israeli technology no less. It is an illegitimate empire propped up by the US, they know their rule is illegitimate so they use terrorism and fear to keep the public from overthrowing them.
Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and critic of the Saudi government, was murdered on October 2, 2018, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. He had gone there to obtain documents for his marriage. His death sparked international outrage, with evidence suggesting that he was killed by a team of Saudi agents sent from Riyadh. Investigations indicated that the operation had been ordered at high levels of the Saudi government, leading to widespread condemnation and strained relations between Saudi Arabia and several countries.
Wow. A ton of executions here.
As long as the majority of Muslims want Shariah Law it makes no difference whether it is an absolute monarchy or a democracy. There’s a lot of crimes that require capital punishment in Islam.
Depending on where you live, even in the West, capital punishment is popular.
I would like to reserve capital punishment for people in support of capital punishment. I know that means me too but if I get to take the rest of them along with me that’s still a good deal.
My only issue with it is that it is irreversible and the system fails too often to be trusted with it. I wouldn’t object to it if no innocent victims were executed, I believe too many people are irredeemable. But the world is imperfect, better to stay safe and only apply reversible punishments.
We know the best court in the land will fail about 4% of the time. That’s the best we can in our nightmarish surveillance state.
Bitcoin you mean irredeemable, you mean they can be released from prison and start creating value. Like we have to keep them in a box and pay for the box.
You mean we should execute them because they are a net resource loss to keep alive in the box yes ?
Did I use redeem wrong? I thought it comes from redemption. Some people cannot be rehabilitated and will always be a danger to others.
We know the best court in the land will fail about 4% of the time.
Lower than I expected but still too high for something irreversible. When the failure rate is 0% then, in my opinion, capital punishment can be justly applied. Since that would never be achieved, no state should have the power to execute. I don’t oppose it of religious or moral reasons, I don’t think it is wrong in ideal terms, but I don’t think flawed and biased people can be trusted with it.
I don’t care if the state legal bureacracy can go back in time and know for sure. Still unacceptable. Also, prisons, unacceptable for anything in their current form.
We put people in prison for our societal convenience, we want to kill or enslave them for economic reasons. It is collectively a greater crime than all crimes by all criminals.
There’s what 4 million in prison in US alone. In specifically designed places to be open pits of hell. If that is civilisation then it deserve to taste activation of the MAD doctrine.
No. It absolutely makes a difference if a state is free or ruled by some tyrant. Saudi Arabia here is a prime example.
Some stats that were hard to find: https://imgur.com/a/executions-by-country-2012-SYIwN
