Executions Are Surging in Saudi Arabia

The number of executions in Saudi Arabia doubled in 2024 as the Middle East led a global surge, according to a new report by Amnesty International. Rights groups say the trend has continued into 2025.

Recorded executions in the kingdom doubled in comparison with 2023, largely for terrorism and drug related offences, Amnesty International said in a new report.

Saudi Arabia carried out at least 345 death penalty executions in 2024, compared to 172 in the previous year, marking the highest recorded number by the monitoring group in any given year. The only two countries that executed more people were China and Iran. It said Iran had executed at least 972 people and China was believed to have executed thousands, but it did not have a figure.

Under pressure over human rights, Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MbS) had pledged to reduce the use of death penalty as part of his reforms to decades of hardline Islamic rule.

Right monitors say they are concerned the trend on executions is continuing into 2025, with the Saudi Press Agency reporting statements by the Interior Ministry confirming executions were carried out as recently as Monday. These included Saudi nationals but also foreigners with charges of murder, drug trafficking and terrorism.

Observers estimate that over 60 people have been executed by Saudi authorities since the beginning of the year, Taha Al-Hajji, legal director of the London-based European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, told Newsweek.

Most executions in Saudi Arabia are carried out by beheading, with charges ranging from murder to terrorism but also for non-violent crimes such as drug smuggling.

Critics have long accused Saudi courts of relying on confessions extracted under torture and of denying defendants access to legal representation, in addition to carrying out capital punishment on minors and political dissidents.

In March, the Saudi government extended an "open invitation" for dissidents abroad to return to the kingdom with promises that they will not be prosecuted, drawing skepticism from rights defenders.

U.S.-Saudi tensions spiked in 2018 after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. U.S. intelligence later concluded MbS approved the killing—an allegation Saudi Arabia denied.

U.S. President Donald Trump viewed the crown prince as a key Middle East ally and has prioritized strong U.S.-Saudi ties during both his first and second terms.

Other Middle Eastern countries including Iraq, Yemen and Egypt also saw rises in the numbers of executions, according to the Amnesty report. It noted a 32 percent increase from 2023, making 2024 the highest yearly figure since 2015. In Iraq, executions nearly quadrupled over a year, the report said.

What People Are Saying

Amnesty International: "The Saudi authorities continued to weaponize the death penalty to silence political dissent and punish nationals from the country's Shi'a minority who supported "anti-government" protests between 2011 and 2013."

Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman in 2022 interview with The Atlantic, transcribed by Saudi Gazette: "Well about the death penalty, we got rid of all of it, except for one category, and this one is written in the Koran, and we cannot do anything about it, even if we wished to do something, because it is clear teaching in the Koran. If someone killed someone, another person, the family of that person has the right, after going to the court, to apply capital punishment, unless they forgive him. Or if someone threatens the life of many people, that means he has to be punished by the death penalty."

Taha Al-Hajji, Legal Director at European Saudi Organization for Human Rights told Newsweek: "There is significant arbitrariness and subjectivity in how the authorities issue sentences, in the absence of a clear penal code. It is hard to track the exact executions process and time as it happens in a secretive manner."

What Happens Next

While the trend may not affect the relationship with the United States under Trump, it could bring greater international scrutiny on Saudi Arabia's rights record. The Saudi foreign minister is scheduled to have high-level meetings with U.S. officials this week.

Source: newsweek.com, Amira El-Fekki‎, April 9, 2025

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

— Oscar Wilde

Comments

South Carolina executes Mikal Mahdi

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

USA | Why the firing squad may be making a comeback

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

I spent 16 years in solitary in South Carolina. This is what it did to me. | Opinion

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000. Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET.

Singapore executes man for 2017 murder of pregnant wife and daughter

Teo Ghim Heng, who strangled his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter in 2017 before burning their bodies, was executed on 16 April 2025 after exhausting all legal avenues. His clemency pleas were rejected and his conviction upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2022. Teo Ghim Heng, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and their four-year-old daughter in 2017, was executed on 16 April 2025. The Singapore Prison Service confirmed that Teo’s death sentence was carried out at Changi Prison Complex. In a news release on the same day, the police stated: “He was accorded full due process under the law, and was represented by legal counsel both at the trial and at the appeal. His petitions to the President for clemency were unsuccessful.”

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.

South Carolina | Man who ambushed off-duty cop to face firing squad in second execution of its kind

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

The Sordid, Unscientific Story Behind Lethal Injection

A new book by a national expert explores the failures of the United States’ favored execution method. Texas was the first U.S. state to execute someone by lethal injection, but the idea for the novel method came from Oklahoma. Our northern neighbor was the first to adopt the plan to replace the spectacle of the electric chair with something more palatable for witnesses and the public. Texas was just the first to test it out on a person. Since 1982, when state officials injected Charlie Brooks—convicted of murder in Fort Worth—with a lethal cocktail of drugs dreamt up by Oklahoma’s medical examiner but untested in any research setting, Texas has led the country in lethal injections. Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection (NYU Press, April 2025)—a new book by law professor, former prosecutor, and death penalty expert Corinna Barrett Lain—brings readers into the death chamber to bear disturbing witness to the reality of lethal injection.

Indiana Supreme Court sets May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie

The condemned man has exhausted his appeals but is likely to seek a clemency plea. Indiana Supreme Court justices on Tuesday set a May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie, who was convicted in 2002 for killing a law enforcement officer from Beech Grove. The high court’s decision followed a series of exhausted appeals previously filed by Ritchie and his legal team. The inmate’s request for post-conviction relief was denied in Tuesday’s 13-page order, penned by Chief Justice Loretta Rush, although she disagreed with the decision in her opinion.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog