Saudi Arabia: Human rights groups condemn new record number of executions in 2025

Saudi Arabia has broken its record for the number of executions carried out annually for the second year in a row.

At least 347 people have been executed this year, down 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.

He said this was “the bloodiest year of executions in the kingdom since tracking began.”

The last prisoners to be executed were two Pakistani citizens convicted of drug-related crimes.

Others sentenced 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, the majority (around two-thirds) were convicted of non-lethal drug-related crimes, which the UN says are “incompatible with international norms and standards.”

More than half of them were foreign nationals who appear to have been executed as part of a “war on drugs” in the kingdom.

Saudi authorities have not responded to the BBC’s request for comment on the rise in executions.

“Saudi Arabia is now operating with complete impunity,” said Jeed Basyouni, Reprieve’s death penalty director for the Middle East and North Africa. “It’s almost a mockery of the human rights system.”

He described torture and forced confessions as “endemic” within the Saudi criminal justice system.

Basyouni called it a “brutal and arbitrary repression” in which innocent people and people on the margins of society have been trapped.

Tuesday saw the execution of a young Egyptian fisherman, Issam al-Shazly, who was arrested in 2021 in Saudi territorial waters and said he had been forced to smuggle drugs.

Reprieve says 96 of the executions were solely related to hashish.

“It almost seems like they don’t care who they execute, as long as they send a message to society that there is a zero-tolerance policy on whatever issue they are talking about, whether it’s protests, free speech or drugs,” Ms. Basyouni said.

There has been a rise in drug-related executions since Saudi authorities ended an unofficial moratorium at the end of 2022, a move described as “deeply regrettable” by the UN human rights office.

Speaking anonymously to the BBC, relatives of men sentenced to death on drug charges have spoken of the “terror” they now live in.

One told the BBC: “The only time of the week I sleep is Friday and Saturday because there are no executions on those days.”

According to Reprieve, cellmates witness people they have shared life with in prison for years being dragged kicking and screaming to their deaths.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, who became crown prince in 2017, has profoundly changed the country in recent years, loosening social restrictions while silencing criticism.

In an attempt to diversify its economy away from oil, it opened Saudi Arabia to the outside world, taking religious police off the streets and allowing women to drive.

But the kingdom’s human rights record remains “abysmal”, according to the US-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch, and the high level of executions is a major concern. In recent years, only China and Iran have executed more people, according to human rights activists.

“There has been no cost to Mohammed bin Salman and his authorities for going ahead with these executions,” said Joey Shea, who researches Saudi Arabia for Human Rights Watch. “Entertainment events, sporting events, all of this continues to happen with no repercussions, really.”

According to Reprieve, the families of those executed are normally not informed in advance, nor are they given the body, nor are they informed where they have been buried.

Saudi authorities do not reveal the method of execution, although it is believed to have been by beheading or by firing squad.

In a statement sent to the BBC, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Dr Morris Tidball-Binz, called for an immediate moratorium on executions in Saudi Arabia with a view to their abolition, as well as “full compliance with international safeguards (including effective legal assistance and consular access for foreigners), prompt notification to families, the return of remains without delay and the publication of comprehensive data on the executions to allow for independent scrutiny.

Saudi citizens executed this year included Abdullah al-Derazi and Jalal al-Labbad, both minors at the time of their arrest.

They had protested against the government’s treatment of the Shiite Muslim minority in 2011 and 2012, and had participated in funerals of people killed by security forces. They were found guilty of terrorism-related charges and sentenced to death after what Amnesty International said were grossly unfair trials based on “confessions” tainted by torture. UN human rights experts had called for his release.

The UN also condemned the June execution of journalist Turki al-Jasser, who had been arrested in 2018 and sentenced to death on charges of terrorism and high treason based on writings he was accused of authoring.

“The death penalty against journalists is a chilling attack on freedom of expression and the press,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay.

Reporters Without Borders said he was the first journalist to be executed in Saudi Arabia since Mohammed bin Salman came to power, although another journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, was killed by Saudi agents at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Last December, UN experts wrote to Saudi authorities to express concern about a group of 32 Egyptians and a Jordanian national who had been sentenced to death on drug charges, and their “alleged absence of legal representation.” Most of the group has since been executed.

A relative of a man executed earlier this year said he had told her they were “taking people like goats” to kill them.

The BBC has approached the Saudi authorities for a response to the allegations but has not received one.

But in a letter dated January 2025 – in response to concerns raised by UN special rapporteurs – they said that Saudi Arabia “protects and defends” human rights and that its laws “prohibit and punish torture.”

“The death penalty is imposed only for the most serious crimes and in extremely limited circumstances,” the letter said. “It is not issued or executed until judicial proceedings have been completed in courts at all levels.”