On September 14, 2023, the Ministry of Defense in Saudi Arabia announced the killing of Pilot Lieutenant Colonel Majid bin Musa Awad Al-Balawi and Chief Sergeant Yousef bin Reda Hassan Al-Azouni, both employees of the Ministry of Defense.
The Ministry's statement confirmed that the trial of the two soldiers was based on charges related to violating orders directed at them, without detailing it, as it explained that it took place "following the established regulations of the obligation to listen and obey and not to separate from the group or violate the legitimate guardianship, military interests, or break the covenant and charter."
The statement enumerated the charges, as the first accused was convicted of “committing the crime of military treason and failing to preserve the interests of the nation and the honour of military service,” while the investigation with the second resulted in being found guilty of committing the crimes of treason in its three forms (great, national, and military) and failing to preserve the interests of the nation and the honour of military service."
According to the Office of Military Trials, high treason is represented by criminal conspiracies against the safety of the kingdom, while national treason includes corrupt plots against the government and spreading false propaganda, while espionage and seeking to gain access to state secrets for the benefit of the enemy is considered military treason.
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights notes that the secret trials and the lack of disclosure of their details, in addition to the broad language used by the ministry in its statement, raise concerns about the truth of the charges against them.
ESOHR explains that the statement indicated that the execution was carried out “in accordance with the legal and regulatory requirements, and the procedures for reviewing and approving the two sentences were completed, and a royal order was issued to enforce what was decided against them.”
As usual, the authorities are trying to give religious legitimacy to their rulings, so the statement began with a verse from the Qur’an: {And fulfil commitment. Indeed, the commitment is ever questioned} and it also relied on a prophetic hadith: { "If someone comes to you seeking to undermine your solidarity or disrupt your unity when you have agreed on a man kill him } in a clear consecration of the use of the religious texts in political approach and their adaptation and selection of texts and their interpretation according to their extremist understanding of them, and the use of this particular text is not appropriate to the situation.
While some information indicates that the charges are related to participation in the Yemen war, there was no consensus on waging this war, especially with the absence of a referendum, elected parliament, or constitution that sets standards for waging wars. In addition, their arrest occurred in September 2017, when Saudi violations were at their peak on Yemeni territory. According to its monitoring of death sentences during the last ten years, ESOHR indicates that Saudi Arabia implemented similar sentences only once, in April 2021, against 3 military personnel.
ESOHR believes that Saudi Arabia’s approach to death penalty cases confirms the widespread use of torture against detainees to extract confessions, and in light of the lack of transparency in the government’s dealings with the cases, it is likely that widespread violations have marred the case, including torture, ill-treatment, and deprivation of the right to defence.
ESOHR indicates that with the execution of soldiers, the number of executions since the beginning of 2023 has risen to 10, while the monitoring confirms that at least 64 detainees are facing death sentences, including 9 minors. ESOHR believes that the lack of transparency and intimidation of families prevents access to sufficient information, but the numbers of executions and cases being tracked confirm the continued escalation of the bloody path that has intensified since King Salman and the Crown Prince took power in 2015.