Saudi Arabia Smashes Own Record For Most Executions In A Year

– Saudi Arabia Smashes Own Record For Most Executions In A Year:

Saudi Arabia has executed 213 people so far in 2024, more than it has in any other calendar year on record, as the kingdom competes for a seat at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).

According to the London-based rights group Reprieve, which documents the death penalty worldwide, the largest recorded figure prior to this year was 196 in 2022, followed by 184 in 2019. “As the world’s attention fixates on horror elsewhere in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is clearing death row with a bloodbath,” Reprieve’s deputy director, Harriet McCulloch, told MEE.

“The Kingdom smashed its own grim record for most people executed in a year in the first nine months of 2024,” she added. “With 213 executions and counting, death row prisoners are at greater risk than ever before, their families desperately awaiting news of their fate in the news.”

The executions are taking place under the government of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, the kingdom’s prime minister and de facto leader, who pledged in a 2018 interview to minimize capital punishment.

Yet, Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s most prolific executioners. At least 1,115 executions have been carried out under Mohammed bin Salman’s rule between 21 June 2017 and 9 October 2024, a spokesperson for Reprieve told Middle East Eye.

In 2023, a joint report by the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) and Reprieve revealed that Riyadh’s execution rate has almost doubled since King Salman and his son, Mohammed bin Salman, came to power in 2015. Between 2015 and 2022, executions surged by 82 percent.

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