Rights Group: 80% of Saudi Minors on Death Row Still Face Execution
RIYADH (Dispatches) – Anti-death penalty group Reprieve said on Friday that 80% of those sentenced to death for crimes in Saudi Arabia while minors still face execution despite reforms announced in 2020.
Saudi authorities said last year they would stop sentencing to death any individuals who committed crimes while minors and would apply this retroactively.
However, the March 2020 royal decree announcing this was not reported by state media or published in the official gazette as would be normal practice. Human rights groups and western lawmakers have raised concerns about its implementation.
The Saudi government media office did not respond to a request for comment on the case.
By Reprieve’s count, 10 people are currently at risk of execution in the kingdom. Only two of them would be covered by the royal decree’s protections.
The international human rights organization dismissed Saudi authorities’ announcement that the ultra-conservative kingdom will no longer use death penalty against people below the age of 18 at the time of the crime.
"When eight out of 10 people facing the death penalty for childhood crimes remain at risk of execution, it’s hard to see how anything has changed, despite all the promises of progress and reform,” Reprieve Director Maya Foa said.
The announcement by the Saudi regime to repeal the death penalty came just two days after the kingdom in effect scrapped the punishment of flogging, in a decision by the General Commission for the Supreme Court.
The most high-profile instance of flogging in recent years was the case of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes in 2014 for criticizing the influential clerics who preach Wahhabism in the country.
Wahhabism is the radical ideology dominating Saudi Arabia, and is freely preached by regime-backed clerics there, and inspiring terrorists worldwide. Daesh and other Takfiri terror groups use the ideology to declare people of other faiths as "infidels” and then kill them.
Saudi authorities have arrested dozens of activists, bloggers, intellectuals and others perceived as political opponents ever since bin Salman became the kingdom’s de facto leader in 2017, showing almost zero tolerance for dissent even in the face of international condemnations of the crackdown.
Saudi authorities said last year they would stop sentencing to death any individuals who committed crimes while minors and would apply this retroactively.
However, the March 2020 royal decree announcing this was not reported by state media or published in the official gazette as would be normal practice. Human rights groups and western lawmakers have raised concerns about its implementation.
The Saudi government media office did not respond to a request for comment on the case.
By Reprieve’s count, 10 people are currently at risk of execution in the kingdom. Only two of them would be covered by the royal decree’s protections.
The international human rights organization dismissed Saudi authorities’ announcement that the ultra-conservative kingdom will no longer use death penalty against people below the age of 18 at the time of the crime.
"When eight out of 10 people facing the death penalty for childhood crimes remain at risk of execution, it’s hard to see how anything has changed, despite all the promises of progress and reform,” Reprieve Director Maya Foa said.
The announcement by the Saudi regime to repeal the death penalty came just two days after the kingdom in effect scrapped the punishment of flogging, in a decision by the General Commission for the Supreme Court.
The most high-profile instance of flogging in recent years was the case of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes in 2014 for criticizing the influential clerics who preach Wahhabism in the country.
Wahhabism is the radical ideology dominating Saudi Arabia, and is freely preached by regime-backed clerics there, and inspiring terrorists worldwide. Daesh and other Takfiri terror groups use the ideology to declare people of other faiths as "infidels” and then kill them.
Saudi authorities have arrested dozens of activists, bloggers, intellectuals and others perceived as political opponents ever since bin Salman became the kingdom’s de facto leader in 2017, showing almost zero tolerance for dissent even in the face of international condemnations of the crackdown.