Court documents have revealed how many disputed their 'confessions' at trial. One tortured man told the judge: 'Those aren't my words. I didn't write a letter'
Al Qaeda's Yemen branch is vowing to avenge victims of a mass execution carried out by Saudia Arabia this week.
The group's declaration is an indication that some of the 37 Saudis executed on terrorism-related charges were members of the Sunni militant group.
Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, as the branch is called, posted a statement on militant-linked websites on Friday, accusing Saudi of offering the blood of the 'noble children of the nation just to appease America.'
The statement says they will 'never forget about their blood and we will avenge them'.
US ally Saudi Arabia executed 37 suspects convicted on terrorism-related charges on Tuesday.
Most were believed to be Shiites but at least one was believed to be a Sunni militant.
His body was pinned to a pole in public as a warning to others.
The victims of the mass execution pleaded with judges before being killed, saying that their confessions were false and obtained under torture, trial documents revealed.
Of the 37 men beheaded on Tuesday, many had attempted to convince the courts they had been tortured and even pledged their loyalty to King Salman in desperation.
The body of one of was crucified after his execution and put on public display, according to local media reports.
Some of those executed on terror charges included men who were just teenagers when they were arrested for attending protests.
Court documents obtained by CNN from trials for 34 of the men showed many had repeatedly denied the veracity of their 'confessions.'
Fourteen were convicted of forming a 'terror cell' in the city of Awamiya after anti-government demonstrations in 2011 and 2012.
One of the condemned - Munir al-Adam - is recorded as saying: 'Those aren't my words. I didn't write a letter. This is defamation written by the interrogator with his own hand.'
Al-Adam was just 23 when he was arrested at a government checkpoint in April 2012.
He was beaten on the soles of his feet and had to crawl on his hands and knees for days.
As a 5-year-old boy he had lost his hearing in one ear following an accident, but after torture he lost hearing in the other and was left totally deaf. The 27-year-old was executed on Tuesday.
Two of those beheaded were just 16 and 17 when they were arrested - including one who was set to start a new life in the US at Western Michigan University.
Mujtaba al-Sweikat, then 17, was severely beaten all over his body, including on the soles of his feet, before 'confessing' to crimes including attending protests in 2012.
In 2017, staff at the university said the English language and pre-finance studies student showed 'great promise' and called for him to be released.
Abdulkarim al-Hawaj, 21, was the youngest executed, 4 years after being arrested in the country's Shia-majority Eastern province for spreading information about protests on WhatsApp.
Under international law, putting to death anyone who was under 18 at the time of the crime is strictly prohibited.
Human rights charity Reprieve said al-Hawaj was beaten, tortured with electricity and chained with his hands above his head until he 'confessed' to his crimes.
Reprieve said both men were sentenced to death at the end of 'sham trials' when they were denied access to lawyers.
It claimed they were held for months in solitary confinement and their convictions were solely based on their 'confessions' which were extracted under torture.
At his trial, al-Hawaj was convicted on cyber crime charges including spreading information on WhatsApp 'as proscribed by the cyber crime bill' and sentenced to death.
Another victim, Hussein Mohammed al-Musallam, said in court: 'Nothing in these confessions is correct and I cannot prove that I was forced to do it. But medical reports ... show the effects of torture on my body.'
State-run media said on Tuesday those executed had 'adopted extremist ideologies and formed terrorist cells with the aim of spreading chaos and provoking sectarian strife'.
The U.N. human rights chief condemned the beheadings, saying most were minority Shi'ite Muslims who may not have had fair trials and at least three were minors when sentenced.
Public execution in Saudi Arabia (July 2012)
Warning: Graphic Content
The sentences were carried out in Riyadh, the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, central Qassim province and Eastern Province, home to the country's Shiite minority.
Three other prisoners who were under 18 at the time of their alleged crimes, Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher, remain on death row.
Al-Marhoon told Reprieve he was tortured and made to sign a blank document, to which Saudi officials then added his 'confession'.
Those who were executed on Tuesday had been sentenced 'for adopting terrorist and extremist thinking and for forming terrorist cells to corrupt and destabilise security', a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said
Executions in the ultra-conservative kingdom are usually carried out by beheading.
At least 100 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the year, according to a count based on official data released by SPA.
Last year, the oil-rich Gulf state carried out the death sentences of 149 people, according to Amnesty International, which said only Iran was known to have executed more people.
Rights experts have repeatedly raised concerns about the fairness of trials in Saudi Arabia, governed under a strict form of Islamic law.
People convicted of terrorism, homicide, rape, armed robbery, homosexuality and drug trafficking face the death penalty, which the government says is a deterrent for further crime.
US commission urges government to punish Saudi Arabia over Shiite executions
The US government commission on religious freedom on Friday urged action against ally Saudi Arabia after its mass execution of 37 people, most of them Shiite Muslims.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, whose members are appointed by the president and lawmakers across party lines but whose role is advisory, said the State Department 'must stop giving a free pass' to Saudi Arabia.
The State Department, in a congressionally mandated annual report, classifies Saudi Arabia among its 'countries of particular concern' for violations of religious freedom, which would normally require the United States to take punitive actions such as imposing economic sanctions.
But successive secretaries of state have each year issued waivers on punishing Saudi Arabia, citing national security interests.
'The Saudi government's execution of minority Shia Muslims on the basis of their religious identity and peaceful activism is not only shocking, but also directly contradicts the government's official narrative of working toward greater modernization and improving religious freedom conditions,' the commission's chair, Tenzin Dorjee, said in a statement as the commission urged an end to the waivers.
Saudi Arabia practices a puritanical Wahabi ideology, with the latest State Department report on religious freedom pointing to a 'pattern of societal prejudice and discrimination' against the Shiite minority and a ban on the practice of any faith besides Islam.
Human rights groups say that nearly all of the Saudi citizens beheaded on Tuesday were Shiite, with 1 crucified after death.
The UN human rights chief said that at least three were minors when charged.
President Donald Trump has vowed to preserve a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, pointing to its major purchases of US weapons, its giant oil exports and its hostility toward US rival Iran.
Trump has not commented on the executions, although the State Department said it urged 'Saudi Arabia and all governments' to respect freedom of religion.
Source: dailymail.co.uk, Danyal Hussain, Ross Ibbetson, April 26, 2019
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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
