Saudi Arabia | Highest number of executions in decades; 3 more executions announced on Saturday, bringing the total for 2024 to 198

Saudi Arabia has carried out its highest number of executions in more than three decades after three executions announced Saturday took the 2024 figure to 198, according to an AFP tally.

The Gulf monarchy executed the third highest number of prisoners in the world after China and Iran in 2023, according to Amnesty International.

The latest tally surpassed its previous highs of 196 in 2022 and 192 in 1995, according to the London-based human rights group, which began recording the annual data in 1990.

The country's official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) announced the deaths of the three prisoners citing a statement from the interior ministry.

The 198 executions this year compare with 170 in 2023, according to tallies compiled by AFP from official media reports.

The oil-rich kingdom has faced persistent criticism over its use of the death penalty, which human rights groups have condemned as excessive and out of step with Saudi efforts to present a modern image on the international stage.

Promises reversed

Jeed Basyouni, the head of Middle East anti-death penalty advocacy for the NGO Reprieve, said the new record showed "Saudi Arabia has given up the pretence around reforms on the use of death penalty".

"Promises made in recent years haven't materialised or have even been reversed," he added.

Those put to death this year included 32 people convicted of terrorism-related offences and 52 found guilty of drug-related offences, according to the tally compiled by AFP.

The previous record of 196 executions in 2022 recorded by Amnesty International, was revealed in a letter from the Saudi human rights commission. AFP counted 147 that year.

Although figures before 1990 are unclear, the Washington Post reported that 63 people were beheaded in 1980 after the previous year's seizure by Islamist operatives of Islam's holiest place, the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

Saudi Arabia's largest mass execution was in March 2022, when 81 people were put to death in a single day.

Riyadh has previously said that the death penalty is necessary to "maintain public order" and sentences are only carried out if "the defendants have exhausted all levels of litigation".

The persistently high number of executions contradicts statements by Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who told The Atlantic in 2022 that the kingdom had eliminated the death penalty with the exception of murder cases or when an individual posed a threat to many lives.

'Sharp increase'

Basyouni said Western public pressure on Saudi Arabia had "decreased significantly in the last year" with the kingdom now feeling "free to behave anyway it wants".

Duaa Dhaini, a researcher at the Berlin-based European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, said it was hard to discern the "real motivation" behind the increase in executions.

She said the sentences may be used to empty Saudi prisons or "send a message of intimidation and force", whether "against lawbreakers or even political opponents".

The new record number comes amid a sharp increase in death sentences carried out against drug offenders this year.

The kingdom ended a three-year moratorium on the execution of drug offenders at the end of 2022, putting 19 to death in a month.

In 2022, the United Nations said that imposing the death penalty for drug crimes "contradicts international norms and standards", calling on the Saudi authorities to "halt the implementation of death sentences for drug crimes".

In September, 31 Arab and international human rights organisations issued a joint statement condemning the "sharp increase" in executions in Saudi Arabia, against drug offenders in particular.

Source: Agence France-Presse, Staff, September 28, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________

Twitter/X | Facebook | Telegram | Contact Us

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

— Oscar Wilde

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

A second South Carolina death row inmate chooses execution by firing squad

Columbia, S.C. — A South Carolina death row inmate on Friday chose execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed April 11. Mahdi, 41, had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair. He will be the first inmate to be executed in the state since Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death on March 7. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after three bullets tore into his heart.

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.

South Carolina | Spiritual adviser of condemned inmate: 'We're more than the worst thing we've done'

(RNS) — When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad. United Methodist minister Hillary Taylor, Sigmon's spiritual adviser since 2020, said the multifaceted, months long effort to save Sigmon's life, and to provide emotional and spiritual support for his legal team, and the aftermath of his execution has been a "whirlwind" said Taylor, the director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

USA | Federal death penalty possible for Mexican cartel boss behind 1985 DEA agent killing

Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited from Mexico in 2022, appeared in Brooklyn court as feds weigh capital charges for the torture and murder of Agent Enrique Camarena NEW YORK — The death penalty is on the table for notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the so-called “narco of narcos” who orchestrated the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985, according to federal prosecutors. “It is a possibility. The decision has not yet been made, but it is going through the process,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.

Inside Florida's Death Row: A dark cloud over the Sunshine State

Florida's death penalty system has faced numerous criticisms and controversies over the years - from execution methods to the treatment of Death Row inmates The Sunshine State remains steadfast in its enforcement of capital punishment, upholding a complex system that has developed since its reinstatement in 1976. Florida's contemporary death penalty era kicked off in 1972 following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia , which temporarily put a stop to executions across the country. Swiftly amending its laws, Florida saw the Supreme Court affirm the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976's Gregg v. Georgia case.

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Oklahoma executes Wendell Grissom

Grissom used some of his last words on Earth to apologize to everyone he hurt and said that he prays they can find forgiveness for their own sake. As for his execution, he said it was a mercy. Oklahoma executed Wendell Arden Grissom on Thursday for the murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews in front of her best friend’s two young daughters in 2005. Grissom, 56, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. local time, becoming the first inmate to be put to death by the state in 2025 and the ninth in the United States this year.

564 People On Death Row In India, Highest Since The Turn Of The Century

In 90% of of all death penalty sentences in 2024, trial courts imposed sentences in the absence of adequate information about the accused, finds a recent report Bengaluru: Following the uproar and the widespread protests after the August 2024 rape and murder of a medical professional in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital, there were demands for death penalty for the accused. The state government passed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2024 (awaiting presidential assent) which included mandatory death sentence for rape which results in death of the victim or if the victim is left in a vegetative state, despite such a mandatory sentence being unconstitutional.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog