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First Third Of 2024 In Saudi Arabia: Executions Rise By 189% And Portend Another Bloody Year. At Least 71 Currently Facing Execution.

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Since the beginning of 2024 until the end of April, the Ministry of Interior in Saudi Arabia announced the execution of 55 individuals. This figure constitutes a 189% increase compared to the executions in the first third of 2023, which witnessed 19 executions. The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights views these numbers as a clear indication of the Saudi government's continued approach towards executing and issuing death sentences, and that the promises made in recent years have become elusive.

Saudi beheads Syrian, 3rd execution in 2015

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Saudi authorities on Tuesday beheaded a Syrian convicted of drugs trafficking, the interior ministry said, in the third execution this year in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

Mohammed al-Mahameed was caught smuggling a significant amount of amphetamines, the ministry said in a statement carried by the SPA state news agency.

He was beheaded in the northern Jawf region.

Two Saudis convicted of drug trafficking were executed in Eastern Province on the first day of the year.

Saudi Arabia has stepped up its use of the death penalty despite repeated appeals from the United Nations and human rights watchdogs.

The kingdom executed 87 people last year, according to an AFP tally, up from 78 executions recorded in 2013.

Rape, murder, apostasy, homosexuality and armed robbery as well as drug trafficking are punishable by death under Saudi Arabia’s strict version of Islamic sharia law.

Source: Agence France-Presse, January 6, 2015

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Location: Saudi Arabia
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First Third Of 2024 In Saudi Arabia: Executions Rise By 189% And Portend Another Bloody Year. At Least 71 Currently Facing Execution.

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