The world celebrates the twentieth session of the World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10, 2022. While countries have made progress during these years, manifested in the abolition of this penalty by 110 countries, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains at the top of the list of its users, and among the five countries that implement it the most.
According to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights' monitoring, since the beginning of 2022, Saudi Arabia has carried out 121 executions, 81 of which are part of a mass execution, the largest in the country's history. Saudi Arabia has set record numbers during the past ten years, as from 2013 until October 2022, more than 1,100 executions were executed, more than 990 of which were carried out during the reign of King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, which began in early 2015.
The continuation of the Saudi government in issuing and executing death sentences and the increasing intensity of the use of this punishment coincided with a series of official promises made during the past years, which were supposed to reduce them:
- In April 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in an interview with Time newspaper that there is work to build new laws to significantly reduce executions.
- In August 2018, Saudi Arabia passed the Juvenile Law, which stopped issuing Taazir death sentences against minors.
- On March 24, 2020, a royal decree was issued to stop the execution of all Taazir death sentences against minors and to reduce all death sentences against minors to 10 years.
- In June 2020, a member of the Shura Council made a recommendation to abolish the death penalty in all Taazir penalties and to suffice with hudud penalties, in line with “Islamic law” and its interpretations followed in Saudi Arabia.
- In January 2021, the official Human Rights Commission said in a statement that Saudi Arabia is temporarily halting death sentences for drug-related crimes.
- On March 3, 2022, in an interview with “The Atlantic”, bin Salman considered that the death penalty is now limited to cases in which someone kills another person.
Torture and the use of the death penalty:
The 2022 World Day is dedicated to reflecting on the relationship between torture, ill-treatment, and the death penalty, where physical and psychological punishments are used during interrogation to extract confessions to crimes, as well as during sentencing; also while awaiting execution.
The death penalty in Saudi Arabia is widely associated with the use of ill-treatment and torture. According to the monitoring of ESOHR, detainees are subjected to various types of torture that start from the moment of arrest and do not stop with the issuance of sentences. Rather, the ill-treatment continues after the execution of the sentences, to the families of the convicts.
Saudi Arabia practices various types of psychological and physical torture against detainees who later face the death penalty, starting during arrest with beatings, the use of force, and enforced disappearance, which duration is prolonged in some cases. This was confirmed by special rapporteurs in letters to the Saudi government, including in cases related to executions carried out in March 2022, where they indicated that Asaad Shubbar and Mohammed al-Shakhouri were subjected to enforced disappearance after arrest.
During the investigation phase, ESOHR documented the use of patterns of physical torture, including electrocution, sleep deprivation, beating, nail extraction, suspension from legs, and others, in order to force the detainee to make confessions or sign confessions. Among those subjected to these types of torture, the minor Mustafa al-Darwish, who was executed in June 2021, who was forced to sign confessions under the threat of retrial.
In addition to physical torture, the organization monitored the practice of psychological torture against a number of detainees who were sentenced to death, including threatening to target their family members, where protester Haidar Al Leaf, who was executed on 23 April 2019, was threatened with bringing his wife to prison and divorcing him if he does not sign confessions. This is added to other practices such as the deprivation of communication with family, cursing, and insulting beliefs.
In many cases, torture led to disabilities, or to permanent injuries and pain, as well as cases of fainting and loss of consciousness, and in many cases, the detainee did not obtain his right to treatment. In the case of the young man Mounir Al Adam, who was executed in April 2019, torture led to an auditory disability, while the young man Abdullah Al -Tarif, who was executed in the same mass execution, indicated that the torture that he was subjected to has led to damages in the back vertebrae, a deviation in the left eye, and other problems.
Although the detainees confirmed in the cases monitored by ESOHR that they were subjected to torture and were forced to ratify confessions before the judges, their allegations were not dealt with seriously, and no serious investigation was opened into these allegations. While the law, which the Saudi government states that it is based on Sharia, prohibits judgments in which the detainee affirmed that his confessions on which the trial was based were extracted under torture, the judges resort to changing the type of judgment, from a ruling stipulated in the Qur’an, such as the rulings of Haraba, to a Taazir ruling based on the judge’s opinion.
Ill-treatment and torture continue even after the start of the trial and in some cases after the issuance of death sentences. ESOHR monitored the return of the detainee Saud Al -Faraj, whom the Public Prosecution is requesting his execution, to solitary confinement after the beginning of his trial, because of his objection to depriving him of the right to communicate with his family. In addition to this, ESOHR monitored cases of ill-treatment of detainees who were sentenced to death, where businessman Abbas al-Hassan, who was executed in April 2019, was placed in solitary confinement and was forced to stand on his feet for hours because he obtained medical eyeglasses from his family.
In addition to the violations that individuals facing the death penalty are exposed to, families are subject to ill -treatment, as they are deprived of their right to farewell to their children, as some families knew of the implementation of rulings from media and social media, which constituted a psychological shock. Besides this, families are deprived of their right to bury the convicts or even to know their place of burial, which constitutes continuous torture against families. According to the monitoring of ESOHR, Saudi Arabia is holding 132 bodies so far.
Persons threatened to death:
There is no transparency in the Saudi government's handling of the execution topic, and it is not possible to reach the actual number of individuals facing this punishment. With the increase in repression, the arrest of human rights defenders, the prohibition of any civil society activity, and the intimidation of families, access to information about convicts has become more difficult.
Despite this, ESOHR has documented 37 cases in which detainees are currently facing the death penalty, including at least 8 minors: Abdullah al-Huwaiti, Jalal al-Labad, Yousef al-Manasif, Sajjad al-Yassin, Hassan Zaki al-Faraj, Mahdi al-Mohsen, Abdullah al-Derazi, and Jawad Qureiris.
In addition to minors, the documentation shows Saudi Arabia's arbitrary use of the death penalty against individuals who have faced sentences not considered among the most serious in international law, including Hussein Abu al-Khair, who faces the irreversible death penalty for drug-related crimes. In addition to the fact that Abu al-Khair did not receive a fair trial, he faces an unknown fate after the Human Rights Commission announced that Saudi Arabia had stopped carrying out death sentences for drug crimes, but without amending the laws in proportion to that. And recently, death sentences were issued against Shadly Al-Huwaiti, Ibrahim Al-Huwaiti and Atallah Al-Huwaiti, who had been arrested for their refusal to forcibly displace the Al-Huwaiti tribe to establish the NEOM project.
In addition, Sheikh Salman al-Awda and Sheikh Hassan al-Maliki face a death sentence on charges related to expressing an opinion, publishing books, and political demands, as the Public Prosecution recently demanded. Also, two Bahraini citizens face the threat of execution at any moment despite the lack of justice in their trial and their exposure to severe torture.
According to ESOHR, the United Nations human rights bodies have written to the Saudi government about many cases of individuals who are currently facing the death penalty and confirmed their violation of international laws.
ESOHR believes that Saudi Arabia's use of the death penalty is linked to a range of systematic violations. In addition to its use against minors, prisoners of conscience, and protesters, it is used arbitrarily, based on trials that lack the most basic conditions of justice, and is largely associated with ill-treatment and torture. ESOHR considers that the impurities of the judicial system in Saudi Arabia are added to the prevention of any kind of civil society and non-governmental organizations’ activity inside the country, to prevent accountability and perpetuate arbitrary executions.