On March 2, 2022, the Tabuk Criminal Court issued a verdict to kill the minor Abdullah Al-Hwaiti as retribution, replacing the previous ruling with the Hirabah sentence, which the Supreme Court overturned on November 10, 2021.
Since the verdict was overturned due to the insufficient evidence and in light of Abdullah's denial of his confessions and his assertion that he was forced to sign under severe torture. The Criminal Court in Tabuk retried him and held several sessions, which did not include a review of the veracity of the confessions and of Abdullah's assertion that he had been tortured, and several violations were not investigated, including not having the adequate right to defend himself.
The Public Prosecution accuses Abdullah of murder in an armed robbery that took place in May 2017, when Abdullah was 14 years old. According to the data, there are many flaws in the evidence on which Abdullah was charged, including his whereabouts at the time of the crime.
The United Nations had condemned the previous ruling several times, and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention classified his detention as arbitrary and called on the Saudi government to release him.
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights considers that the death sentence against the minor Abdullah Al-Hwaiti again has several indicators that raise grave concern and confirm that the Saudi government is proceeding on the bloody path of death sentences, including minors.
- The European Saudi Organization considers that replacing the Hirabah death sentence to killing as retribution, confirms the ability of the Saudi judiciary to manipulate the types of death sentences it issues, which makes promises to stop Hirabah death sentences against minor’s depend on the judge’s opinion in light of his ability to manipulate judgments and adapt cases. The manipulation of the type of execution sentences is added to the manipulation of the defendants’ ages, and the denial of their being minors, and this is what happened in the execution of the minor Mustafa Al-Darwish in June 2021.
- The verdict on Abdullah confirms the falsity of Saudi Arabia's repeated allegations, especially before the Human Rights Council, that the death penalty against minors should be completely halted. In addition to manipulation, Saudi laws still allow the killing of minors in other cases, and the royal order published by the official Human Rights Commission was limited to Taazir sentences for minors, that is, provisions that are not specified by law or Sharia have a penalty and it is up to the judge to assess the penalty. However, they can still be killed by means of retribution and Hadd punishments according to Article 16 of the Juvenile Law.
- The ruling to kill Al-Hwaiti, despite the Supreme Court’s overturning of the ruling and in light of the flagrant violations involved in the case shows the inability of the Saudi official agencies to conduct investigations and punish those responsible, especially with the failure to investigate to confirm that he was severely tortured.
ESOHR believes that the death sentence against a minor confirms the Saudi government’s manipulation of the execution file, through false promises, lack of justice, and others. ESOHAR believes that the life of Al-Huwaiti, along with the lives of other minors, the organization monitored 4 of them, is threatened at any moment.
The organization notes that in light of the promises of issuing a new penal code, fears increase that it will include the death penalty with poor legal formulation of its articles, so that its rubbery texts allow its misuse instead of abolishing the death penalty or limiting it to the most serious crimes only.