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Saudi Arabia Sees Record-High Executions Driven by Drug Sentences and Sectarian Bias
- Saudi Arabia executed a record 345 people in 2024, the highest annual total Amnesty International has documented in over three decades.
- The increase followed Riyadh's lifting of a 33-month moratorium on drug-related executions in November 2022, after it was announced in January 2021.
- Nearly one-third of the 2024 executions were for drug offences, with around 75% of those executed for such crimes being foreign nationals from countries including Egypt, Ethiopia, and Pakistan.
- During June 2025, the kingdom carried out a total of 46 executions, with 37 of these related to drug offenses, resulting in an average exceeding one drug-related execution per day.
- Amnesty International and human rights advocates call on Saudi Arabia to halt all executions immediately while undertaking comprehensive legal reforms aimed at completely eliminating capital punishment, with particular attention to cases involving drug-related charges.
62 Articles
62 Articles
In 2024, 345 executions were recorded, the highest number so far, and the pace in 2025 is already set to exceed that record.
The death penalty is used much more frequently in Saudi Arabia than it was a few years ago. This year, 180 people were executed from January to June, Amnesty International reports. Last year, an average of almost every day, a death sentence was also carried out in the kingdom, with 345 executions. That is the highest number of executions in Saudi Arabia in thirty years, the human rights organization concludes in a 57-page report. The researchers…
Amnesty International is reporting increasing numbers of executions in Saudi Arabia. The human rights situation is casting a shadow over the 2034 FIFA World Cup.
According to Amnesty International, 180 people were executed in Saudi Arabia in the first six months of the year.
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