Saudi Arabia has surpassed its record for the number of executions carried out annually for a second year in a row.
At least 347 people have now been put to death this year, up from a total of 345 in 2024, according to the UK-based campaign group Reprieve, which tracks executions in Saudi Arabia and has clients on death row. It said this was the “bloodiest year of executions in the kingdom since monitoring began”. The latest prisoners to be executed were two Pakistani nationals convicted of drug-related offences. Others put to death this year include a journalist and two young men who were children at the time of their alleged protest-related crimes. Five were women.
But, according to Reprieve, most – around two thirds – were convicted of non-lethal drug-related offences, which the UN says is “incompatible with international norms and standards”. More than half of them were foreign nationals who appear to have been put to death as part of a “war on drugs” in the kingdom.
“Saudi Arabia is operating with complete impunity now,” said Jeed Basyouni, Reprieve’s head of death penalty for the Middle East and North Africa. “It’s almost making a mockery of the human rights system.” She described torture and forced confessions as “endemic” within the Saudi criminal justice system.
Ms Basyouni called it a “brutal and arbitrary crackdown” in which innocent people and those on the margins of society have been caught up.
