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

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.

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

“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.

On Tuesday, a young Egyptian fisherman, Issam al-Shazly, was executed. He was arrested in 2021 in Saudi territorial waters and said he had been coerced into smuggling drugs.

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

“It almost seems that it doesn’t matter to them who they execute, as long as they send a message to society that there’s a zero-tolerance policy on whatever issue they’re talking about – whether it’s protests, freedom of expression, or drugs,” said Ms Basyouni.

There has been a surge of drug-related executions since the Saudi authorities ended an unofficial moratorium in late 2022 – a step described as “deeply regrettable” by the UN human rights office.

Speaking anonymously to the BBC, relatives of men on death row on drugs charges have spoken of the “terror” they’re now living in.

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

Cellmates witness people they have shared prison life with for years being dragged kicking and screaming to their death, according to Reprieve.

The de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman – who became crown prince in 2017 – has changed the country profoundly over the past few years, loosening social restrictions while simultaneously silencing criticism.

In a bid to diversify its economy away from oil, he has opened Saudi Arabia up to the outside world, taken the religious police off the streets, and allowed women to drive.

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

“There’s been no cost for Mohammed bin Salman and his authorities for going ahead with these executions,” said Joey Shea, who researches Saudi Arabia for Human Rights Watch. “The entertainment events, the sporting events, all of it is continuing to happen with no repercussions, really.”

According to Reprieve, the families of those executed are usually not informed in advance, or given the body, or informed where they have been buried.

The Saudi authorities do not reveal the method of execution, although it is believed to be either beheading or firing squad.

In a statement sent to the BBC, the UN’s 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 abolition,.

He also pressed for “full compliance with international safeguards (including effective legal assistance and consular access for foreign nationals), prompt notification of families, the return of remains without delay and the publication of comprehensive execution data to enable independent scrutiny”.

Among the Saudi nationals executed this year were Abdullah al-Derazi and Jalal al-Labbad, who were both minors at the time of their arrest.

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

The UN also condemned the execution in June 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.

“Capital punishment against journalists is a chilling attack on freedom of expression and press freedom,” Unesco’s Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, said.

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 murdered by Saudi agents at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Last December, UN experts wrote to the Saudi authorities to express concern over a group of 32 Egyptians and one Jordanian national sentenced to death on drugs charges, and their “alleged absence of legal representation”. Since then, most of the group have been executed.

A relative of one man put to death earlier this year said he had told her that people were being “taken like goats” to be killed.

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 reply to concerns raised by UN special rapporteurs – they said Saudi Arabia “protects and upholds” 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 stated. “It is not handed down or carried out until judicial proceedings in courts of all levels have been completed.”