At least 79 more remain at imminent risk of execution on similar charges. Saudi authorities have executed at least 116 people in 2026 as of July 27, according to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights.
“Saudi authorities are executing marginalized Ethiopian migrants after court hearings that sometimes barely last a few minutes without a lawyer or a translator,” said Joey Shea, senior Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Dozens of vulnerable migrants remain at risk of imminent execution after trials that were barely trials at all, in a system that treats their lives as disposable.”
Since April, Human Rights Watch has interviewed more than a dozen informed sources about the cases of Ethiopian migrants facing imminent execution for nonlethal drug-related offenses, including two with direct knowledge of the most recent executions. Saudi authorities said the most recent executions were for “smuggling hashish.” The sources said that all five men were from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, where rights abuses have persisted and the humanitarian situation remains dire following the 2020-2022 armed conflict. Escalating tensions between the Ethiopian federal government and Tigrayan authorities have raised fears of renewed atrocities in the region. The five migrants fled Tigray and had taken the dangerous eastern migration route across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen.
Human Rights Watch interviewed an informed source with direct knowledge of the cases of the five men, and another informed source corroborated the general facts of the case. One of the sources said that one of the men executed had been living in Yemen for over a year without employment or access to support services when a Yemeni man approached him in March or April 2023 and offered him and the four others a job. The five men were “physically and mentally weak” after their arduous journey from Ethiopia as well as unemployment and poverty and felt they “had to accept that job despite not knowing what the job was,” the source said. The man told them to carry a package with unknown contents a short distance and where to deliver it, and the man then disappeared.
Saudi authorities arrested them as they walked on the side of a road. They were “surprised to find Saudi soldiers arresting” them because they did not realize they had crossed the border into Saudi Arabia, the source said.
The men were detained for more than three years in the Khamis Mushait detention facility in the Asir province of Saudi Arabia. They were forced to sign documents in Arabic, a language they did not understand, and only had three court sessions lasting between three and twenty minutes, two of them held remotely. A translator provided by Saudi authorities was present during only two of the sessions, and the migrants were told they would be sentenced to death for smuggling hashish. The men did not have legal representation or an opportunity to provide a meaningful defense.
During the first court session, the men were informed they could write an appeal letter and submit it to the Saudi security guards at the detention center. Because the men could not read or write Arabic, at least one of them asked a Saudi prisoner to write the appeal letter and had “no idea if the letter was presented to the court or to the judges,” the source said. “The security guard could just throw it into the garbage.”
The five men were Christians and the sources said that prison officials would not have permitted them to practice their religion. “If the Christians want to pray together, the police come and stop this,” the source said. One of the prisoners also reported that the police forcefully removed a cross necklace, the source said.
Before the July 27 executions, on June 23, 2026, Saudi authorities had executed five other Ethiopians for allegedly “smuggling hashish.” In one of these cases, a smuggler had forced a man to carry qat, a mild stimulant plant native to Ethiopia, from Yemen into Saudi Arabia as a condition of facilitating his journey.
Cathinone, the stimulant in qat, is banned in Saudi Arabia but legally permissible and culturally consumed in parts of Ethiopia as well as in Yemen. The sources said that the man did not know that carrying qat into and within Saudi Arabia was illegal.
On May 12, the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church appealed to Ethiopian and Saudi authorities to halt the execution of Ethiopian nationals. In a July 13 statement, the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it “remains closely engaged with the relevant authorities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia regarding matters affecting Ethiopian nationals,” including “individuals facing legal proceedings and judicial measures.” The statement did not specify whether this included those sentenced to death for drug offenses.
Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances because of its inherent cruelty. Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penalty is contrary to international human rights law, which upholds every human being’s “inherent right to life” and limits the death penalty to “the most serious crimes,” which result intentionally in death.
In 2025, nonlethal drug-related offenses accounted for 68 percent of Saudi executions. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention condemned Saudi Arabia’s practice, finding that executions for drug-related offenses are incompatible with international human rights law and fall outside the scope of the “most serious crimes.” The working group urged Saudi authorities to reinstate a moratorium and emphasized that imposing the death penalty for such offenses constitutes a clear violation of international legal standards.
Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians live and work in Saudi Arabia. While many migrate for economic reasons, many have fled serious human rights abuses by their government, including during the recent brutal armed conflict in northern Ethiopia. Human Rights Watch has for years documented a wide range of human rights abuses against migrants taking the same route.
The detention of migrants in deplorable facilities in Saudi Arabia is a longstanding problem, which Human Rights Watch has found amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment. In 2023, Human Rights Watch found that Saudi border guards had killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border, which, if committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, would be a crime against humanity.
Saudi Arabia should immediately cancel the death penalty for Ethiopian migrants and review all sentences in line with Saudi Arabia’s international obligations, including the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Ministry and its representatives in Saudi Arabia should urgently intervene with their Saudi counterparts and at a minimum ensure that their nationals receive immediate consular assistance.
“Governments should urgently press Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s authorities to halt these executions and commute the sentences of the dozens more awaiting the same fate,” Shea said.
Source: hrw.org, Staff, July 28, 2026
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
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