Since the beginning of 2025, Saudi Arabia has executed 230 people
Saudi Arabia executed eight people on Saturday, today the country’s state press, demonstrating that the use of the death penalty is being deepened by the Gulf Monarchy, especially for drug -related convictions.
According to the Saudi official news agency, the SPA, four Somalis and three Ethiops were executed on Saturday in the southern region of Najran for smuggling hashish to the kingdom, ”while a Saudi was performed by his mother’s murder.
Since early 2025, Saudi Arabia has executed 230 people, according to a count of the France-Presse news agency (AFP) based on official data.
Of this total, 154 were for drug -related convictions.
In 2024, the kingdom performed 338 executions, a record that risks being overcome again this year.
Analysts attribute this increase to the “war against the drug” launched by Saudi Arabia in 2023, and legal proceedings against prisoners are now almost completed.
Saudi Arabia resumed executions for drug -related crimes at the end of 2022 after suspending the death penalty related to this type of crime for about three years.
The country executed 19 people in 2022, two in 2023 and 117 in 2024 for drug -related crimes.
Human rights advocates state that maintaining the death penalty harms the image of tolerance and modernity that the kingdom seeks to project, but the Saudi authorities maintain that the death penalty is necessary to maintain public order and is only applied after all resources are exhausted.
In the annual report of the Enisting International Human Rights Defense Organization, launched in April, it was mentioned that the number of executions by states that have a death penalty reached, in 2024, the highest level of the last decade, with 1,518 people executed, most in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Based on the data confirmed by the organization, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia accounted for 91% of executions by death penalty, and there was an increase in executions related to accusations linked to the drug world in violation of human rights.
