Over 100 foreigners executed in Saudi Arabia this year

Saudi Arabia has executed more than 100 foreigners, mostly convicted of drug-related crimes, so far this year, indicating a sharp increase that one rights group said was ‘unprecedented’.

This is almost triple the figures for 2023 and 2022, when Saudi authorities had put to death 34 foreigners convicted of different crimes each year, according to AFP tallies.

Foreigners executed this year have included 21 from Pakistan, 20 from Yemen, 14 from Syria, 10 from Nigeria, nine from Egypt, eight from Jordan and seven from Ethiopia. There were also three each from Sudan, India and Afghanistan, and one each from Sri Lanka, Eritrea and the Philippines.

The Berlin-based European-Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) said this year’s executions had already broken a record. “This is the largest number of executions of foreigners in one year. Saudi Arabia has never executed 100 foreigners in a year,” said Taha al-Hajji, the group’s legal director.

Overall Saudi Arabia carried out its highest number of executions in more than three decades, surpassing its previous highs of 196 in 2022 and 192 in 1995, AFP reported in September. Since then executions have continued at a rapid clip and totalled 274 for the year as of Sunday.

Saudi Arabia has faced persistent criticism over its use of the death penalty, which human rights groups have condemned as excessive and out of step with efforts to soften its forbidding image and welcome international tourists and investors.

The kingdom executed the third-highest number of prisoners in the world after China and Iran in 2023, according to Amnesty International.

The latest execution, on Nov 16 in the southwestern region of Najran, was of a Yemeni national convicted of smuggling drugs into the Gulf kingdom, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. That brought to 101 the number of foreigners executed so far in 2024, according to the tally which is compiled from state media reports.

Moratorium

Saudi Arabia in 2022 ended a three-year moratorium on the execution of drug offenders, and executions for drug-related crimes have boosted this year’s numbers.

There have been 92 such executions so far this year, 69 of them of foreigners.

Diplomats and activists say that foreign defendants usually face a higher barrier to fair trials, including the right to access court documents. Foreigners “are the most vulnerable group”, said Hajji of the ESOHR.

Not only are they often “victims of major drug dealers” but also “subjected to a series of violations from the moment of their arrest until their execution,” he said.

The persistently high number of executions undercuts statements by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who told The Atlantic in 2022 that the kingdom had eliminated the death penalty with the exception of murder cases or when an individual posed a threat to many lives.