Inside Saudi Arabia's 'relentless killing spree' of medieval-style executions under Crown Prince MBS
The Saudi authorities have killed hundreds in capital punishments since the Crown Prince's tenure started in 2015, hitting a new milestone that Amnesty International said reveals the kingdom's 'chilling disregard for the right to life'.
Despite bin Salman promising he would limit the use of capital punishments, the number nearly doubled since he took the throne, according to NGO Reprieve. From 2010 to 2014 there was an average of 70.8 executions per year but from 2015 to 2022 there was an average of 129.5 executions per year – a rise of 82 per cent.
Last year, the kingdom carried out at least 172 executions, despite renewed promises from bin Salman to limit the scope of capital punishment.
Saudi Arabia even beheaded 81 people in a single day in March 2022 as part of the 193 executions Amnesty International said were carried out in the country - despite authorities saying it had been just 147.
The majority of state executions in Saudi Arabia are still carried out by sword decapitation - sometimes followed by the crucifixion of the body as the heads are displayed on a stick - but there have also been reports of prisoners sentenced to death by stoning.
Beheadings are only carried out by Saudi Arabia and the Taliban and can be used for a variety of crimes including murder, apostasy (abandoning Islam), homosexuality, witchcraft or sorcery, and 'waging war on God'.
The sentence is traditionally carried out in a public square on Fridays after prayers to attract an audience and serve as deterrence.
Saudi state executioner Muhammad Saad al-Beshi previously detailed exactly how these brutal killings take place, most of the time with one of his swords, sometimes with a gun.
Terrifyingly, those who face being beheaded aren't anaesthetised at all - but al-Beshi claimed if he does his job right, those in front of him wouldn't suffer for long.
'If I let myself feel mercy or compassion for the person I am executing, he will not die at the first stroke. He will suffer. If the heart is compassionate, the hand fails. It can take two, three, four, or five strokes. God knows how many. He might not even die,' the executioner said in an interview with a Lebanese TV channel.
The 62-year-old said he even had to behead some of his friends before, but coldly stated that they 'brought it on themselves'.
He said when prisoners get to the execution square - the one in the centre of capital Riyadh is locally known as 'Chop Chop Square' - 'their strength drains away' before he beheads them.
Al-Beshi said he would also carry out limb amputations, a punishment he said is outlined in the Koran for thieves.
He would cut off a hand or a hand and a leg, for which the condemned person only receives local anaesthesia.
'I use a special sharp knife, not a sword. When I cut off a hand I cut it from the joint. If it is a leg the authorities specify where it is to be taken off, so I follow that,' he explained.
The father-of-seven shockingly involves his family in his work by letting his children clean his blooded sword after beheadings.
He said he is proud that his son is following in his footsteps after training to be an executioner, after already taking on the family legacy from his own father.
Al-Beshi told Arab News of his first execution in 1998, for which he used his father's sword: 'The criminal was tied and blindfolded. With one stroke of the sword I severed his head. It rolled metres away.
'There are many people who faint when they witness an execution. I don't know why they come and watch if they don't have the stomach for it.'
He admits he fainted himself when he witnessed his first execution as a little boy. He said: 'The first thing that came to my mind when people talked about executions was the digestive system. I wanted to see it. [...]'
'So I came along, and the moment my father executed the man, I ran to see the digestive system, but all I could see was the man's head flying, and where the neck used to be, there was a kind of well. It went down,' he said and added that this was the last thing he remembered before fainting.
'I woke up in the car on the way home. At night, I tried to go to sleep, but couldn't. I had nightmares, but only once. Then I got used to it.'
Saudi authorities deem the executions to be necessary to 'maintain public order' and compatible with their interpretation of sharia law, the Islamic legal code based on the teachings of the Koran.
In 2022, when Saudi Arabia carried out the biggest mass execution its history as it killed 81 men in one day for terror offences, the country's state television said criminals that included members of Al Qaeda 'followed the footsteps of Satan'.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the executions, saying they included people 'convicted of various crimes, including the murdering of innocent men, women and children'.
A total of 73 Saudis, seven Yemenis and one Syrian with some being part of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State group and backers of Yemen's Houthi rebels died in the mass execution on March 12, 2022.
The number of executed surpassed even the toll of a January 1980 mass execution where 63 militants died after being convicted of seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest site, in 1979, the worst-ever militant attack to target the kingdom.
While the Saudi Press Agency announced executions in the past, human rights activists believe the number of unreported executions might be much higher.
Another instance when numerous people were executed on the same day happened in 2019, when 37 people convicted of 'terrorism offences' were killed.
In a particularly gruesome show of blood, one prisoner was reportedly crucified - in a punishment reserved for what the Saudi authorities deem very serious offences - and another, allegedly a 'terrorist extremist', was beheaded and had his head placed on a spike, the Sun reports.
Crucifixion is the court-ordered public display of the body after execution, which often sees the separated head being placed next to the body as a deterrent to others.
A picture circulated on social media appears to show five bodies hanging from a horizontal pole suspended between two cranes, a public display which serves as a reminder to those who might contemplate a life of crime.
The bodies belonged to a gang of five robbers, all of whom were publicly beheaded before their corpses were hoisted high in the air, where they remained for days.
Another picture shows a woman dressed in black being held down at the side of a public road by four Saudi policemen, after she has been convicted of killing her stepdaughter.
She was executed with a sword blow to the neck, as she screamed: 'I did not do it.' (video. Warning: Graphic content)
In yet another beheading scene, the executioner, dressed in the white robes typically worn by Saudi men, raises his curved sword above his head and brings it down in a single sweep.
Just this week Saudi Arabia announced that it had executed seven people for 'terrorism' offences on Tuesday, the highest single-day figure since the 81 were put to death in March 2022.
The seven were convicted of 'creating and financing terrorist organisations and entities', the official Saudi Press Agency said, citing the Gulf kingdom's interior ministry.
The nationalities of the seven executed on Tuesday were not revealed, but their names and titles indicated they were Saudi.
The vice president of the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR), Adel al-Saeed, condemned what he called 'the vague and loose charges' behind the executions.
The statement by the authorities did not name the 'terrorist organisation' the executed were accused of being members of, 'what exactly the crimes it committed' were or 'the role of the victims in these crimes', Saeed said.
Back in 2018, a man was executed and crucified after he was convicted of stabbing a woman to death. He was also accused of attempted murder of a man and the attempted rape of a woman, according to Bloomberg.
Another brutal execution method in Saudi Arabia is stoning a person to death, which is documented in the Torah, written centuries before the common era - and remains in use in several countries including Saudi Arabia.
The punishments is commonly used for women who committed adultery. The accused are placed in holes before a truck unloads hundreds of rocks onto them, according to witness reports.
In 2015, a married 45-year-old woman from Sri Lanka, who was working as a maid in Riyadh, was stoned to death after having an affair with another man, the Mirror reported. The man, who was single, received 100 lashes as a punishment.
The kingdom has been routinely criticised for its prolific use of capital punishment, especially since de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seeking to transform the world's biggest crude oil exporter into a business and tourism hub.
Activists say the kingdom's continued embrace of capital punishment undermines the image of a more open, tolerant society that is central to Prince Mohammed's Vision 2030 reform agenda.
The Kingdom executed nearly three times more foreign nationals for drug offences than it did Saudi nationals, despite foreign nationals making up only 36 per cent of the population.
Despite bin Salman's promising to the UN in 2018 that his country would stop executions for child defendants and for non-lethal offences, Saudi Arabia is still using the death penalty liberally.
In April 2020, the kingdom announced it was ending the death penalty for those convicted of crimes committed while they were under 18.
In October 2021, Ali Al-Nimr, a young Shi'ite Muslim whose death sentence for protesting when he was 17 had been commuted to 10 years in prison under the legislative reforms, was released from prison.
But the kingdom's state-backed Human Rights Commission later clarified that the ban on the death penalty only applied to a lesser category of offences under Islamic law known as 'ta'zeer.'
Abdullah al-Howaiti was 14 when he was arrested, tortured and forced to confess to a crime he could not have committed.
He was convicted of armed robbery and killing a police officer in 2019 - but he was caught on CCTV playing football while the crimes were committed.
Abdullah was still a minor when he was handed the death penalty.
The Supreme Court threw out the conviction and ordered a retrial in November 2021 following international outrage, but in March 2022 the young man was again sentenced to death by a lower court.
A group of UN legal experts have called on Saudi Arabia to annul Abdullah al-Howaiti's second death sentence because he did not receive a fair trial.
They wrote that 'it is inherently cruel to execute children,' and called on Saudi Arabia to 'abolish the imposition of the death penalty for juveniles for all crimes, without exception.'
At least 15 child defendants – those who committed 'alleged' crimes when they were minors – have been executed since 2013.
In 2021, Mustafa al-Darwish, who was on death row due to an alleged crime committed when he was just 17, was executed.
In September last year, when the number of executions in Saudi Arabia already stood at nearly 100, Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Director, said: 'In clear contrast to Saudi Arabia's repeated promises to limit its use of the death penalty, the Saudi authorities have already executed 100 people this year, revealing their chilling disregard for the right to life.
'The authorities' relentless killing spree raises serious fears for the lives of young men on death row who were under 18 at the time of the crimes.
'Saudi Arabia is one of the world's top executioners. Amnesty International has documented numerous cases in which the authorities have sentenced people to death for anything from a few tweets to drug-related offences following grossly unfair trials that fell far short of international human rights standards.
'In August alone, Saudi Arabia executed an average of 4 people per week, including one Pakistani man who was executed for drug smuggling. The death penalty is prohibited under international law for drug-related offences, which do not fall under the category of "most serious crimes".'
Human Rights Watch also slammed the Saudi authorities for a 'brutal show of autocratic rule', noting many families found out about the deaths of their loved ones 'just like the rest of us, after the fact and through the media'.
They also questioned the 'fairness of their trials and sentencing'.
Reprieve Director Maya Foa said it was 'terrifying' to think that executions were 'business as usual' in Mohammed bin Salman's Saudi Arabia.
'Owning the wrong books, posting a critical tweet, speaking to a journalist or disagreeing with the Crown Prince can earn you a death sentence,' she added.
'And while world leaders stare at their shoes and agree to believe the regime's lies, the killing continues relentlessly.'
European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) legal director Taha al-Hajji added: 'The Crown Prince has blamed "bad laws" and rogue judges for Saudi Arabia's continued execution crisis, but nothing gets done in the Kingdom without his approval.
'His endless empty promises of reform are contradicted by the facts: it has been yet another year of bloodshed in Saudi Arabia. Protesters and child defendants remain at imminent risk of execution with a stroke of the ruler's pen.'
What crimes can you get the death penalty for in Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia retains the death penalty for a wide range of offences across three categories in Islamic law: Qisas (retributive), Had (mandatory) and Ta'zir (discretionary).
Within these categories, judges in Saudi Arabia retain wide-ranging powers to determine what behaviour may constitute a criminal offence and its resulting punishment, including the death penalty.
A recent report by Reprieve shows that between 2010 and 2021, the types of crimes resulting in executions could be classified into the following groups:
- Murder
- Drugs trafficking, including smuggling
- Sexual offences
- Formation of, or membership with, an organised criminal or proscribed group
- Kidnapping or false imprisonment accompanied by assault, burglary or robbery
- Sedition, treason and other state security offences like terrorism
- Witchcraft and sorcery
International law requires states that retain the death penalty to limit its application to 'the most serious crimes', widely accepted to mean intentional killing. (Source: Reprieve)
Source: Mail Online, Miriam Kuepper, March 2, 2024
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