The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia implements foreigners, the drug perpetrators at a record pace: amnesty

Amnesty International said on Monday that the executions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia increased last year to a record level.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed 345 people last year, the highest number of amnesty ever recorded in more than three decades. The group said in the first six months of this year alone, 180 people were executed, indicating that the record is likely to be broken again.

This year, about two -thirds of those who were executed for non -deadly drugs were convicted, according to the activist group, which was separately affected. Amnesty has also sparked similar concerns about the executions of drugs.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia did not provide any comment on the reason for the increase in the death penalty.

It is one of several countries in the Middle East, including Iran, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, which can impose the death penalty on drug -related charges. But the Kingdom is still one of the best executioners in the world behind China and Iran only – which is often difficult to measure its implementation numbers accurately – and it appears that its use of deaths in drugs.

Short -term stops on drugs related to death

Amnesty has documented the cases of 25 foreign citizens, who are currently in a row, or were recently executed in Saudi Arabia due to drug -related crimes.

More than half of those executed this year in the Kingdom were foreign citizens, according to Revive.

One of these Egyptian national fish, Ahmed, disappeared in 2021 while working on the fishing boat in Sinai. A month later, his family received a speech that was arrested in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and was sentenced to death for drug trafficking. Ahmed claims that the boat owner forced him to carry a bundle at the threat of weapons.

“We are living in terrorism, we are afraid every morning,” said a member of the Ahmed family, who spoke to AP provided that his identity is not disclosed. “Every morning until 9 am, we are afraid that one of them will take to implement without knowing us.”

Amnesty said that the story of Ahmed is very common in a country where an estimated 76 percent of the workforce is composed of migrant workers.

“The low -wage migrant workers who took place in” war on drugs “in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have little capital to prevent their exploitation at the hands of agents with experience or fraud, or to provide legal representation that would actually defend their rights once in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and face the death penalty.”

In 2021, as part of criminal justice reform in the Crown Prince, the Human Rights Committee in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced the preventive endowment in drug -related executions. However, the endowment remained in place for less than three years, before being canceled without explanation.

Before that period, Amnesty had documented that 76 percent of 202 people were executed for drug -related crimes between 2017 and 2019 were migrant workers.

In a 10 -year review, migrant workers from Pakistan were the most likely to execute drug -related crimes only, a total of 155, with 69 migrant actions from Syria and 50 from Jordan were executed for drug crimes.

Read the amnesty report:

The repression continues despite the update

In 2022, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, highlighted that he limited the use of the death penalty in murder cases only.

“About the death penalty, we got rid of all of this, except for one category, and this group is written in the Qur’an, and we cannot do anything about it, even if we wanted to do something, because it is a clear education in the Qur’an,” said the Atlantic prince.

The executions come at a time when the Kingdom continues to make bold reforms to diversify its economy as part of its 2030 vision initiative.

For years, human rights groups have criticized the human rights record in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There were rapid social changes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the reign of King Salman, the Crown Prince, as the workforce entered into increasing numbers and also allowed to lead.

But the Kingdom also supervised the arrest of women’s rights activists, including former British Columbia University student, Lujain, who was arrested for three years.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also imprisoned for businessmen, the letters of the royal family, and others in a campaign of corruption, which is similar to that of the strongest people of the Kingdom.

Gaid Passioni, who directs the British -based legal legal and North Africa program, insisted that Prince Muhammad may change the policy of Saudi Arabia’s execution quickly if he wants to.

“He can do a mass pardon,” Basouni said. “The billions spent on the so -called reforms, designed to strengthen a more tolerant and comprehensive kingdom under the rule of the Crown Prince, hide an authoritarian state as the daily executions of drug crimes are now the base.”