GENEVA (Dispatches) -- United Nations human rights experts condemned Saudi Arabia’s execution of a man convicted for acts allegedly committed when he was a child, and warned that two other prisoners face imminent execution, in a statement that sharply criticized the kingdom’s use of counter-terrorism laws against its Shia minority.
The experts, including the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, said they were “appalled” by the execution of Hassan Zaki al-Faraj, which Saudi authorities announced on October 17 alongside four other men.
“Executing a person for an offence committed as a child is absolutely prohibited under international law,” the experts said. “It is an arbitrary deprivation of life.” 
Al-Faraj was convicted over his participation in protests and funeral processions in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province when he was 14 or 15 years old, amid demonstrations against the treatment of the Shia minority. 
He was arrested in 2017, held in solitary confinement for months, and reportedly tortured into a confession, according to rights groups. His family received no advance notice of the execution, and his remains were withheld.
The experts said withholding the body from the family “inflicts profound anguish and amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” and called on Saudi authorities to return al-Faraj’s remains and permit an independent medico-legal examination.
The statement warned that Yusuf Muhammad Mahdi al-Manasif and Muhammad Labbad now face imminent execution after the Supreme Court upheld their death sentences. 
Both were convicted for participating in peaceful protests in 2011 and 2012, when al-Manasif was 15 or 16. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had already found the detention of all three men arbitrary and called for their release.
The experts voiced “deep concern” over the use of vague counter-terrorism legislation to impose death sentences and the “reported targeting of members of the Shia minority”. 
They noted that a 2020 royal decree presented as ending death sentences for child offenders has failed to stop the executions, and urged Saudi Arabia to commute all such sentences and establish an immediate moratorium on executions.
Al-Faraj is the fourth person executed in Saudi Arabia for alleged childhood offences in just over a year, according to the UN statement. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 17 executions since 2015 for offences committed when the defendant was a child, despite the kingdom’s claims that its juvenile law provides protection.