Alarm, anxiety as Saudi Arabia escalates rate of executions

RELATIVES of death-row inmates in Saudi Arabia fear each day could be the last for their loved ones as the Gulf kingdom picks up the pace of executions.

After a nearly five-month lull in which no one was put to death, 24 people have been executed since early October, 18 of them in the past two weeks, according to an AFP tally based on state media reports. They include 16 people convicted of drug-related offences, ending a moratorium on administering capital punishment for such crimes that was announced in January 2021.

For Zeinab Abo al-kheir, whose brother Hussein has been on death row since 2015, the uptick has ushered in a period of anxious waiting.

“We cannot contact him. We always wait for his contact. Sometimes we wait for six months or more, which of course puts us under psychological pressure and extreme terror,” the Jordanian national said from Canada, where she lives.

Saudi officials often give advance notice of executions in murder cases, for the benefit of murder victims’ families, said Duaa Dhainy, researcher for the European-saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR). In most other cases, though, executions are announced only after the fact.

That means relatives of death row inmates often learn about executions like everyone else: from state media reports that omit the names of those executed, Dhainy said. It sometimes falls to other inmates to contact families and deliver the bad news. Families “don’t have this chance to say goodbye to their beloved one,” she said.

The UN this week condemned the uptick in executions, specifically for drug crimes, describing them as “a deeply regrettable step” that was “incompatible with international norms and standards”.

Human rights groups say Hussein Abo al-kheir’s case highlights flaws in the Saudi justice system that make it imperative to end capital punishment entirely. The 57-year-old from Jordan was arrested in 2014 while crossing into Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a driver for a family in the city of Tabuk, Zeinab said. Both Zeinab and Britain-based NGO Reprieve say Hussein endured 12 days of torture before he signed a document confessing to smuggling narcotics. They say he did not have access to a lawyer. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has determined there is no legal basis for Hussein’s detention.

Last week, Hussein contacted a relative in Jordan to disclose that he had been transferred to an area of the prison in Tabuk reserved for inmates whose executions are imminent, according to his sister.

The wealthy Gulf kingdom has often carried out death sentences by beheading Saudi Arabia has announced 144 executions this year as of Wednesday, more than double last year’s total of 69. An international outcry erupted in March when the kingdom executed 81 people in a single day for terrorism-related offences.

ESOHR is aware of 54 people on death row, including eight minors|