Death Penalty News

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.

(Beirut) – A Saudi court has sentenced a man to 20 years in prison on charges related to his peaceful social media activity, Human Rights Watch said today. The conviction is the latest example of Saudi Arabia’s likely transnational repression due to his family member’s activities abroad and yet another escalation in the country’s ever-worsening crackdown on freedom of expression and other basic rights.

Home Minister Targets Anti-Death Penalty Activists The Singaporean government since mid-April has issued at least four execution notices to individuals convicted of drug-related offenses. They are among 36 death row prisoners taking part in a legal action relating to their constitutional right to legal aid following appeal. None of these prisoners currently have legal representation.

Thirteen organisations sign open-letter in last-ditch attempt to save men who say they were tortured into confessions More than a dozen human rights groups have signed an open letter to Bahrain's king in a last-ditch attempt to commute the death sentences of two activists who were charged with killing an officer by bombing a police convoy in 2014. The signatories included Human Rights Watch and Reprieve, who maintain that Mohamed Ramadhan and Hussain Ali Moosa had not received a fair trial and were charged after the Bahraini police gained confessions from torture.  "We, the undersigned organisations, urge you to commute the death sentences of Mohamed Ramadhan and Hussain Ali Moosa, who have exhausted all legal remedies available to them after the Court of Cassation upheld their death sentences," the statement noted.  Earlier this month, a Bahraini court upheld the death sentences of the two pro-democracy activists. All avenues for the two men have ...

Death Sentences Stand Despite Evidence of Torture “I am Mohamed Ramadan. I have been sentenced to death.… I want my voice to be heard by those who believe in the principles of justice and equality.… I am innocent of the crime of which I was accused, subjected to a sham trial and sentenced to death. My death will be unlawful, and yet, it has been [ordained] by law.” Ramadan asked that this statement, a message he left on his wife’s cell phone, be shared. Ramadan is slated to appear before Bahrain’s Court of Cassation – the country’s court of last resort – on Monday, July 13, one final opportunity to appeal his unjust death sentence. This is not the first time the Court of Cassation will hear the case of Mohamed Ramadan and Hussein Moosa.  A criminal court sentenced both men to death in 2014 for murdering a policeman and other terrorism charges, despite both men stating that officers tortured and sexually assaulted them into confessing. Ramadan refused to sign a confes...

(Beirut) – A Tunisian court sentenced two men accused of sodomy to two years in prison on June 16, 2020, Human Rights Watch said today.  The decision violates their rights to privacy and nondiscrimination under international law and Tunisia’s 2014 constitution.  The police also attempted to subject the defendants to an anal exam, apparently to use as evidence in the case. Police arrested the two men, both 26, on suspicion of same-sex conduct on June 3 in Le Kef, a city 175 kilometers southwest of Tunis, after one of them filed an unrelated complaint against the other.  The prosecutor of the Kef First Instance Tribunal charged the men with sodomy under article 230 of the penal code, which punishes consensual same-sex conduct with up to three years in prison.  Hassina Darraji, the lawyer who took on the men’s defense for the upcoming appeal, told Human Rights Watch the defendants told her they had refused the police’s demands that they undergo an...

(ABNA24.com) Ahmad al-Mullali, 24, and Ali Hakim al-Arab, 25, were executed at Jaw prison, south of the Bahraini capital Manama, on Friday after private meetings with their families. The Public prosecutor's office announced that al-Malali and al-Arab were put to death on charges of possessing firearms and killing a police officer. The opposition al-Wefaq society condemned the executions as extrajudicial. The Bahraini regime carried out the death penalties despite fierce protests by the United Nations and several human rights groups and The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights said that the families of the two had received phone calls from Jaw prison for private visits - a procedure that usually precedes execution. Reports had also been emerged of an increased security presence around the jail. Bahraini law requires death row inmates to receive a family visit on the same day that they are killed. Mullali and Arab were arrested separately in February 2017. T...

Some of the views expressed in the following piece do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor of Death Penalty News. Baghdad (AFP) -- Human Rights Watch on Friday condemned France's "outsourcing" of trials of Islamic State group suspects held in Iraq where seven of its nationals have this week been sentenced to death. Two of them have "alleged that they were tortured or coerced to confess", the New York-based watchdog said in a statement. "France and other countries should not be outsourcing management of their terrorism suspects to abusive justice systems," said HRW's acting Middle East director, Lama Fakih. "These countries should not be sitting idly by while their citizens are transferred to a country where their right to a fair trial and protection from torture are undermined." A Baghdad court on Wednesday sentenced a Frenchman to death for joining IS, bringing to seven the number of French jihadists on ...

The Bahrain Court of Cassation, the country’s court of last resort, upheld the death sentence against two men on May 6, 2019, Human Rights Watch said today. A court convicted the men, Ali al-Arab and Ahmad al-Malali, of terror offenses in a mass trial on January 31, 2018. Bahrain ended a de facto 7-year moratorium on the death penalty in January 2017, when it executed three men. Under Bahraini law, after the Court of Cassation confirms a death sentence, the decision is sent to the King, who has the power to ratify the sentence, commute it, or grant a pardon. On April 26, 2018, King Hamad commuted the sentences of four men who were sentenced to death in a military trial in December 2017. According to the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, 8 people are currently on death row in Bahrain. “Despite its rhetoric on reform, Bahrain is moving in the wrong direction by reinstating the death penalty,” said Lama Fakih, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “This i...

Kuala Lumpur  - Malaysia's new government has failed to deliver on most of its human rights reform promises in its first year in power, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said on Wednesday.  Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's coalition won a stunning election victory in May 2018, ending more than 60 years of rule by a party that first took power at the time of independence from Britain, pledging to weed out corruption and improve a poor rights record.  But most of its planned reforms have either been delayed or withdrawn, following a backlash from opposition parties and conservative ethnic Malay Muslim groups, Human Rights Watch said.   "There's been far too much of the government just coasting on prevailing political winds," Phil Robertson, the group's deputy Asia director, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.  "It has to stand up and show some conviction."   The prime minister's office did not immediately respond to a...

With 253 executions in 2018—including six people executed for offenses they allegedly committed as children—Iran is still among the world’s leading executioners, according to Amnesty International’s recent annual report on global trends in executions. Yet executions in Iran dropped by half last year, from 507 in 2017.   The significant reduction is mostly attributable to the reform of Iran’s draconian drug law that went into force in late 2017. The long-awaited amendment had originally sought to outlaw executions for all nonviolent drug offenses. After legislative battles, the final version did not go so far, but it substantially raised the amount of drugs the suspect was found to possess for a mandatory death penalty. Since January 2018, the Iranian judiciary has largely halted executions for drug offenses as they review the cases of 15,000 convicts on death row.  The change in the law comes after almost a decade of advocacy on the ground and pressure from int...

The three defendants' confessions were extracted through torture, say rights groups Three Egyptian prisoners were executed on Wednesday morning after a court confirmed their death penalty on charges of killing a police officer, according to two human rights activists who spoke to Middle East Eye. Major General Nabil Farag, a senior ministry of interior official, was shot dead by gunmen during a security force raid on the town of Kerdasa in September 2013 after deadly clashes erupted in the aftermath of the ousting of President Mohamed Morsi. The raid on the town, known for its support for Morsi, came after the army and police violently dispersed the Rabaa and Nahda protests that August, leading to the death of at least 1,000 Morsi supporters in one day. The executions on Wednesday bring the total number of executed Egyptian political prisoners since 2013 to 38, according to Ahmed Mefreh, director of the Geneva-based Committee for Justice rights group. Mefreh ...

An international rights group on Friday said Egypt executed 3 Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to death following torture and beatings to extract confessions. Human Rights Watch said in a statement the families of the men were notified of their hanging on Thursday and asked to come to the morgue to pick up the bodies. The 3 were convicted last year for the 2014 killing of a judge's son in the Nile Delta town of Mansoura. HRW said a letter from one of the men was reportedly smuggled out of prison, describing torture and beatings. Michael Page, deputy director at the New York-based group, says Egypt "committed a glaring injustice by executing three men who apparently gave 'confessions' extracted through electric shock and other torture." Later Friday, the Interior Ministry confirmed the execution, saying prison authorities carried out a final court order after the defendants' appeal was turned down. Since the 2013 ouster of Egypt's...