Death Penalty News

A Sri Lankan Tamil migrant worker, Sivarasa Anojan, is facing the death penalty in Saudi Arabia after an appeal against a five-year prison sentence over a Facebook post deemed insulting to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Former Foreign Minister Ali Sabry has urged Saudi Arabian authorities to grant clemency to Sri Lankan national Anojan Sivarasa following reports that his five-year prison sentence has been escalated to a death sentence over an offensive social media comment. Expressing deep concern over the reported development, Sabry said Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry had not confirmed the death sentence and that the formal written judgment was still awaited. “Respect for Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty and legal system does not require silence in the face of disproportionate punishment,” Sabry said.

According to rights groups' claims, more than 500 people have been killed by the regime since the protests erupted in January. Ten individuals accused of participating in the January protests have been sentenced to death, while another six received prison sentences of up to 25 years, according to Iranian media reports on Sunday. The sentences were handed down by Judges Morteza Barati and Mohammadreza Tavakoli of Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court, according to the Iran Human Rights Society, an independent advocacy group and information network.

Indiana law says that the press has no right to be present when the state carries out executions. It limits those who can attend to the warden of the prison where the execution is carried out, immediate family members of the crime victim, no more than five friends or relatives of the convicted person, the prison physician, and the prison chaplain. Only if an inmate selects a member of the press as one of the five friends may they attend.

The EU has tightened the rules governing GSP+ trade preferences, but Pakistan’s record raises a harder question: whether Brussels is prepared to suspend market access when a major beneficiary fails to demonstrate sustained compliance with human rights, labour and governance obligations. The European Union has formally adopted revised rules for its Generalised Scheme of Preferences, strengthening the conditions attached to preferential market access for developing countries. The new framework will apply from 1 January 2027 and is intended to tighten monitoring, widen the list of international conventions, and make suspension of benefits easier in cases of serious violations.

SINGAPORE: Singapore's criminal justice policies are in accordance with international law, grounded in evidence and calibrated to its national context to protect citizens, the country's delegation told a session at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. This was in response to recommendations by several states calling for the suspension and abolition of the death penalty, said Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Singapore presented its approach on Tuesday (May 12) at its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) - a process which reviews the human rights records of all UN member states once every five years. This was Singapore's fourth UPR.

Death penalty abolitionist and social justice activist Kokila Annamalai Parvathi was charged on April 23, over her refusal two-and-a-half years ago to comply with a government censorship order. As previously reported by Green Left, Annamalai defied a directive under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), to issue a “correction” to an online post she and the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC) made about the 2024 execution of Azwan bin Bohari. The post explained that Azwan had been on death row since 2019 after being arrested under the Misuse of Drugs Act four years earlier. It pointed out many inconsistencies and injustices in the way his execution had been handled by the state.

Saudi Arabia’s execution of more than 2,000 people over the last decade in many cases violates Saudi and international law and belies the government’s claims of reform, 36 groups including Human Rights Watch said today. The following is their statement:  As of early April 2026, the number of executions carried out by Saudi Arabia since King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s accession to the throne on January 23, 2015—and the subsequent appointment of his son, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, on June 21, 2017—has surpassed 2,000, according to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), marking a stark escalation in the use of capital punishment under their rule. 

Human Rights Watch said in its annual report that Saudi authorities carried out an unprecedented wave of executions in 2025, following trials that largely failed to meet standards of fairness and due process, while continuing to suppress freedom of expression and arbitrarily detain dissidents and activists. According to the report, Saudi authorities carried out at least 322 executions by early December 2025—the highest number recorded in the country’s modern history. The organization confirmed that among those executed were two individuals convicted of alleged crimes committed when they were under the age of 18, in direct violation of the international human rights law ban on executing children.

People in North Korea, including schoolchildren, are being publicly executed, sent to labour camps or subjected to brutal public humiliation for watching South Korean television shows or listening to K-pop, according to new testimonies gathered by Amnesty International. North Koreans who fled the country told Amnesty that watching globally popular South Korean dramas – including Crash Landing on You, Descendants of the Sun and Squid Game – or listening to South Korean pop music can lead to the most extreme punishments, including death. Those without money or connections face the harshest consequences.

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia on Friday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

UN experts have called for an immediate halt to the planned execution of Zahra Shahbaz Tabari, the 67-year-old electrical engineer detained in Lakan Prison in Rasht in northern Iran. The severe procedural violations in this case —including the unlawful deprivation of her liberty, the denial of effective legal representation, the extraordinarily brief trial, the lack of adequate time to prepare a defence, and the use of evidence that appears insufficient to support a charge of baghi [rebellion against Islamic rulers] — render any resulting conviction unsafe.

Saudi Arabia has surpassed its record for the number of executions carried out annually for a second year in a row. At least 347 people have now been put to death this year, up from a total of 345 in 2024, according to the UK-based campaign group Reprieve , which tracks executions in Saudi Arabia and has clients on death row. It said this was the “bloodiest year of executions in the kingdom since monitoring began”. The latest prisoners to be executed were two Pakistani nationals convicted of drug-related offences. Others put to death this year include a journalist and two young men who were children at the time of their alleged protest-related crimes. Five were women.

An Iranian cultural activist has been formally charged with “armed rebellion,” an offense that can carry the death penalty, according to a human rights organization. Ehsan Rostami appeared on December 10 at Branch Five of the Tehran Public and Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office, where he was charged on suspicion of membership in groups opposed to the government, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported. Rostami was immediately transferred to solitary confinement at Evin Prison following the charging session.

The 81-year-old Franco-Algerian writer’s imprisonment exposes both the brutality of Algiers and the moral cowardice of Paris. PARIS — Boualem Sansal has spent his life fighting for the right to speak freely. Today, at 81, suffering from cancer, he is paying the price for that courage — imprisoned in Algeria after a sham trial, condemned for doing what he has always done: telling the truth about power. In March 2025 , an Algerian court sentenced the Franco-Algerian writer to five years in prison for “undermining national unity” and “attacking state security.” His crime was to speak — calmly and publicly — about the legacy of Algeria’s authoritarianism and the suffocating control its rulers still exert over public life. For that, he was seized, tried without due process, and locked away.

Iran is poised to implement a new anti-espionage law expanding government control over social media and online activity which could expand the death penalty for internet speech. The text of the law, which was published by the moderate outlet Entekhab on Wednesday, details sharp new penalties for alleged national security offenses online. "The fabrication or dissemination of false reports, or the creation or publication of any content that typically causes public fear and panic or is contrary to national security, shall—if not constituting the crime of corruption on earth—be punishable, at the court’s discretion, by third-degree imprisonment," it said.

Saber Ben Chouchane has been granted a presidential pardon after he was sentenced to death over posts deemed offensive to President Kais Saied. A Tunisian man sentenced to death over Facebook posts deemed offensive to President Kais Saied has been granted a presidential pardon, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Saber Ben Chouchane, 51, had been sentenced on multiple charges including "spreading false news", defence lawyer Oussama Bouthelja told AFP. The Paris-based Tunisian human rights group CRLDHT had said the verdict set "a serious precedent" and that the North African country had "reached unprecedented levels of human rights violations".

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — A court in Tunisia has sentenced a 51-year-old man to death over Facebook posts deemed offensive to President Kais Saied and a threat to state security, his lawyer said Friday. Saber Chouchen was convicted on Wednesday of three charges: attempting to overthrow the state, insulting the president and spreading false information online. Judges said the posts incited violence and chaos and violated Tunisia’s penal code as well as the controversial 2022 cybercrime law, Decree 54.

Defectors from the Pyongyang regime describe the growing repression and deterioration of human rights denounced by the UN Article 1 of North Korea ’s Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, passed in 2020, outlines why Pyongyang believes the legislation is necessary: The law “contributes to the strengthening of our sense of ideology, revolution, and social class by launching a powerful battle to obstruct the inflow and distribution of reactionary ideology and culture and anti-socialist ideology and culture.” Article 7 adds that strict punishments, including the death penalty, will be applied to any citizen “bringing in, viewing, and distributing reactionary ideology and culture, depending on the severity, regardless of the reason and the offender’s social class.”

Turki al-Jasser's execution draws global outrage over the kingdom's harsh crackdown on dissent The national flag of Saudi Arabia. Human rights groups and press freedom advocates have criticised Saudi Arabia's execution of an imprisoned journalist over the weekend, the latest in a flurry of death sentences enacted in the kingdom. Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser was executed on June 14, authorities said. He was arrested in 2018 and tried for terrorism, treason and endangering national security.

Saudi Arabia has executed journalist Turki Al-Jasser after seven years in prison, following accusations of terrorism and treason, which activists say were related to his critical social media posts about the royal family. Human rights groups have condemned the execution, citing it as part of the kingdom’s crackdown on free speech. A prominent Saudi journalist, Turki Al-Jasser, has been executed after spending seven years in prison, The Associated Press reported, citing the Saudi Press Agency. Activists cited by the AP argued that the charges against him were politically motivated, primarily tied to his social media activity.