2024 BLOODIEST YEAR ON RECORD AS SAUDI ARABIA EXECUTES 199

Tue 01 October 2024:

Saudi Arabia has executed 199 people this year, the highest number of executions in a calendar year on record, according to Reprieve.

In July and August alone there were 80 executions. The previous highest figure was 196 in 2022 followed by 184 in 2019.

“The Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is presiding over a death penalty crisis, which is intensifying as authorities apparently seek to clear out their overcrowded prison population,” the rights group said today. A 2023 report by Reprieve and ESOHR showed that since he came to power with his father King Salman in 2015, the annual rate of executions has doubled. In total at least 1,456 people have now been executed under the crown prince.

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Reprieve highlighted that the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) is due to vote on 9 October on whether Saudi can join the body, adding that “during the last HRC election in October 2020, UN member states denied them a seat. Since then violations against child defendants, women’s rights defenders and social media influencers have got worse.”

Jeed Basyouni, who leads Reprieve’s work on the death penalty in the MENA region, said:

“We know that the Saudi authorities often increase the pace of executions when the world’s attention is elsewhere, and this appears to be happening now. With fresh horrors being reported every day in Gaza, the Middle East on the brink of a wider war, and the US presidential election transfixing global media, death row prisoners in Saudi Arabia are at higher risk than ever.”

Each morning, families wake up in fear of finding out their loved one has been killed, in an announcement on state media.

A family member of Youssef Al-Manasif, who faces execution for non-lethal offences including attending demonstrations when he was between 15 and 17 years old, said: “For the last seven years, since Youssef was taken from us and tortured, we have suffered, in constant fear that one day we will see a news announcement that he has been executed. It is not too late for the authorities to show mercy – and to honour the promise they made to the world that no child defendant would ever be executed in Saudi Arabia again. I ask them, please, send Youssef home to his family.”

-MEMO

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