Under the title: No One Believed Me: A Global Overview of Women Facing the Death Penalty for Drug Crimes. The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide published a report indicating that Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that continue to execute women on charges of drug trafficking in light of widespread violations of justice.
The report showed that between 2008 and 2018, Saudi Arabia was one of the five countries that carried out 40% of the death penalty worldwide, and it continued to implement it against drug charges. The report examined the circumstances that drive women to commit drug offenses or face charges of drug offenses and the impact of gender bias on the criminal process they are exposed to.
The report pointed out that countries that still apply the death penalty for drug offenses violate international law, and the majority of women sentenced to death are convicted of drug-related offenses. The report indicated that the countries that still carry out the death penalty on drug charges, including Saudi Arabia, do not publish sufficient information on the rationale for this use, and there is often no data.
The report noted that foreign nationals are over-represented among women on death row for drug offenses, and many of these foreign nationals are migrant workers. While it is difficult to access sufficient data, the research documented its information from several well-informed parties, including the European-Saudi Organization for Human Rights, which provided figures related to Saudi Arabia. The report indicated that in 2018, Saudi Arabia executed 58 people for drug crimes, 29 of whom were foreigners, the majority of whom were from Pakistan and Nigeria. In 2019, two foreign nationals were executed for drug trafficking crimes, and in 2020 five foreigners were executed for the same reason.
The report emphasized that foreign nationals face particular obstacles in criminal prosecutions. They often do not speak the language of the police or the courts, have difficulty accessing interpreters, and have little local support in dealing with the criminal system, and their families live too far for support. The report was based on the documentation of Pakistani organizations that the translator in several cases in Saudi Arabia told the judge that the accused confessed to the crime when, in fact, he was asking for pardon.
The report pointed out the evidence of detraction from criminal justice for foreign defendants, as it clarified that in 2011 after an Indonesian worker was executed in Saudi Arabia, the President of Indonesia established a task force to provide consular assistance to Indonesians facing death sentences abroad. Between 2011 and 2014, 240 death sentences were commuted.
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights notes that in 2021 the official Human Rights Commission in Saudi Arabia announced the suspension of executions for drug crimes in Saudi Arabia. No official statement, decision, or law has yet been issued that clarifies alternative punishments or explains the fate of individuals currently sentenced to death for drug offenses. According to the European-Saudi organization, the individuals against whom final judgments have been issued are still facing an unknown fate. In addition, the whereabouts and fate of the bodies of hundreds of individuals who were executed in Saudi Arabia are still unknown.
The report presented the cases of many victims of the death penalty, including the Pakistani Ijaz Fatimah, who was executed in Saudi Arabia with her husband in April 2019 for smuggling heroin:
Ijaz and Mustafa married in 2006, and they had five children. Mustafa, the family's sole breadwinner, ran a small chicken shop and did whatever extra work he could find for a daily wage. The couple worked hard and struggled to support their family, and three of their children died while they were in infancy.
In 2016, Ijaz and Mustafa told their families that they wanted to perform the Umrah in Mecca. They arranged their trip through their friend Waseem, who was a travel agent. We do not know if Ejaz and Mustafa were aware of Waseem's involvement in drug activities, but they felt the flight was safe enough to travel with their daughter, Bushra, who was six years old at that time. Mustafa's family thought they brought her because she was too close to her parents and couldn't live without them. Their youngest child, Ali Reza, remained in Pakistan. On June 27, 2016, the day the family arrived in Saudi Arabia, they were arrested at Jeddah airport on charges of heroin smuggling..
Airport police immediately separated the family members and took Mustafa to a men's prison and Ijaz and Bushra to the women's section of Dhahban Central Prison. Six months later, prison officials separated Bushra from her mother and held her for more than two years in a separate juvenile facility, despite her young age. Neither Saudi nor Pakistani authorities notified the families of Ijaz and Mustafa of their arrest.
In occasional calls to their families, Ijaz and Mustafa described the criminal process as full of abuse, and they had neither a lawyer nor an interpreter. Since neither of them speaks Arabic, Mustafa's father said that they could not understand the charges, and when they were convicted they did not understand that they were sentenced to death.
Meanwhile, Bushra, who was seven years old at the time, lived in prison-like conditions in the abode of juveniles, under the supervision of Saudi officials who spoke only Arabic and was surrounded by Arabic-speaking young people. She was only allowed to play outside for one hour each day. She would see her mother every two months for 30 minutes, under the strict supervision of prison guards. Within two years, Bushra had seen her father only twice and was reportedly "terrified" by his shaved head and bound limbs. After a fight with the Saudi authorities, Ijaz's relatives traveled to Saudi Arabia to pick up Bushra, and she returned to Pakistan on February 27, 2019. In her last meeting with her mother shortly before she left the country, Bushra was silent.
Less than two months later, in April 2019, Ijaz and Mustafa were beheaded. Once again, the authorities failed to notify their families, who learned the news when Ijaz and Mustafa's colleagues managed to send a message.
Saudi authorities have not responded to or even acknowledged the families' request to return the bodies, and the families have not received any legal documents, or any death certificates, from Saudi Arabia. The families of Ijaz and Mustafa have turned to the Pakistani government for help, applying to the Supreme Court and asking the state to help facilitate the return of the remains of their loved ones. The Supreme Court rejected their request, and the bodies of Ijaz and Mustafa are still in an unknown location in Saudi Arabia.