Saudi Arabia puts 81 to death ahead of Johnson’s visit to discuss oil

SAUDI Arabia yesterday executed 81 men for terrorism, murder and offences including holding “deviant beliefs” in its biggest mass execution in decades.

Saudi state television described those executed as having “followed the footsteps of Satan” and the killings, carried out shortly before a visit by Boris Johnson, drew international criticism.

The Prime Minister is expected to visit the Kingdom in the next few weeks to discuss high oil prices, which have surged to record levels after the invasion of Ukraine.

Saudi Arabia is the only country with sufficient production capacity to lower the price but relations with Washington are strained after Joe Biden publicly criticised de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

Mr Johnson has been urged to act as mediator as the West seeks to end its reliance on Russian gas and oil.

The Kingdom will extract a high price for turning on the tap, analysts said. “It is going to use the high oil prices to extract concessions and build leverage,” Dr Sanam Vakil, deputy director of Chatham House’s Middle East programme, said.

Saudi officials have called for legal immunity for Mr Bin Salman from any charges over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, as well as more US weapons for their ongoing war with Yemen.

The men executed yesterday included seven Yemeni nationals and one Syrian man, according to the interior ministry.

“These individuals, totalling 81, were convicted of various crimes including murdering innocent men, women and children,” a statement said.

Others had joined foreign terrorist organisations, such as Islamic State, alQaeda and the Houthis, it said.

Thirty seven Saudis were executed for their part in a plot to assassinate security officers and attack police.

The toll dwarfed the 67 executions reported in Saudi Arabia in the whole of 2021 and the record of 63 militants killed in one day in 1980 for seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979.

Forty seven people were executed in one day in 2016. Death row inmates are typically beheaded in Saudi Arabia.

It came a day after Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger jailed and flogged for “insulting Islam”, was freed after a decade in prison.

However, Mr Badawi remains banned from leaving the country for the next decade and cannot reunite with his wife and three children in Canada.

They were forced to flee after he was sentenced to 1,000 public lashes, 50 a week for 20 weeks, and 10 years imprisonment at the end of 2014.

“Raif called me. He is free,” said his wife Ensaf Haidar, who led the worldwide campaign for her husband’s release and has held a public vigil for him every Friday for seven years.

Human rights campaigners have vowed to fight the travel ban.