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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.

EU Urges Belarus To Spare 2 On Death Row

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The European Union has sharply criticized Belarus for sentencing 2 men to death, and repeated its call for President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's government to abolish capital punishment.

Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini, said on January 23 that the Minsk city court sentenced Vyachaslau Sukharka and Alyaksandr Zhylnikau to death on January 20 after a retrial.

In December 2015, Sukharka and Zhylnikau were convicted of murdering 3 people and sentenced to life in prison. But in July 2017, the Supreme Court upheld an appeal by the prosecutor and the case was sent for retrial.

"The European Union holds a strong and principled position against the death penalty, which is a cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment and a violation of the right to life," Kocijancic said in a statement.

"The death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to crime, and errors, inevitable in any legal system, become irreversible."

"We expect the remaining death sentences in Belarus, which is the only country in Europe still applying capital punishment, to be commuted and a moratorium on the death penalty introduced as a 1st step towards its abolition," the statement said.

The EU and rights groups have urged Belarus to join a global moratorium on the death penalty for years.

According to rights organizations, more than 400 people have been sentenced to death in Belarus since it gained independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, January 24, 2018


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

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