Death Penalty News

DUBAI (Reuters) - Anti-death penalty group Reprieve said on Friday that 80% of those sentenced to death for crimes in Saudi Arabia while minors still face execution despite reforms announced in 2020. Saudi authorities said last year they would stop sentencing to death any individuals who committed crimes while minors and would apply this retroactively. However, the March 2020 royal decree announcing this was not reported by state media or published in the official gazette as would be normal practice. Human rights groups and western lawmakers have raised concerns about its implementation. Asked whether the decree applied to all types of crimes, the state-backed Human Rights Commission told Reuters in February the ban only applied to a lesser category of offence under Islamic law known as “ta’zeer.” This would mean judges can therefore still sentence child offenders to death under the other two categories, according to Saudi Arabia’s interpretation of sharia: “houdoud”, or serious crimes...

Abdullah al-Huwaiti is still on death row despite a royal decree that ended death sentences for crimes committed as a minor Saudi man who was convicted following a "grossly unfair trial" for crimes committed when he was a minor risks being executed, Human Rights Watch reports, despite a royal decree that scrapped the death penalty for juveniles. Abdullah al-Huwaiti was convicted on murder and armed robbery charges by a criminal court in October 2019 when he was 17, along with five other defendants, said the rights group, which reviewed the court documents in the trial. He was arrested when he was 14, the rights group said, for crimes allegedly committed in 2017. HRW said Huwaiti was sentenced to death and ordered to pay 1,315,000 SAR ($350,000) in restitution to the victims. His case is due to be transferred to Riyadh's Supreme Court for a final ruling. The group added that all six defendants told the court at trial that interrogators extracted their confessions through t...