2023-06-15 18:47:00
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Despite a commitment by the Saudi authorities to end the use of the death penalty against persons under the age of 18 at the time of the crime, seven young men are at imminent risk of execution after an appeal court upheld their punishment, Amnesty International said today. His execution would mean a chilling escalation in the use of the death penalty, increasing the unprecedented number of executions in the country, which in the last three years alone had already multiplied by seven.
“The authorities have promised to limit the use of the death penalty and have adopted legal reforms that prohibit the execution of people who were under 18 at the time of the crime. If the authorities want such promises to be taken seriously, they must order an immediate stop to the planned execution of seven young men who were children at the time of their arrest,” said Heba Morayef, Middle East and North Africa Director at Amnesty International.
Relatives are often not informed when death sentences are upheld by the Supreme Court and the King, and often hear about the execution of their loved ones through the media.
The seven young people were children under 18 years of age, and one of them was only 12, at the time of the commission of the alleged crimes. They were also denied legal assistance throughout the entire period of their detention pending trial. Between March 2022 and March 2023, an appeal court upheld their death sentences. After unfair trials and marred by “confessions” obtained under torture, six of them were found guilty on terrorism charges; the seventh, of the charges of armed robbery and murder.
Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s leading executioners. In 2022, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed 196 people, the highest annual number of executions recorded by Amnesty International for the country in the last 30 years.. It is three times higher than the number of executions carried out in 2021 and at least seven times higher than in 2020.
So far this year, Saudi Arabia has executed 54 people for a wide range of crimes including murder, drug smuggling and terrorism-related offences.
The optional punishments of Islamic law, to which the seven youths have been sentenced, are not specified in the sharia (Islamic law) and, therefore, the magnitude of the punishment is left to the discretion of the judges.
In 2018, Saudi Arabia enacted the Juvenile Law, which established a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for anyone under the age of 18 found guilty of an offense punishable by optional punishment under Islamic law. A Royal Decree issued in 2020 also prohibited judges from imposing the optional death penalty on persons under 15 years of age at the time of the commission of the crime.
In May 2023, the Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission confirmed in a letter to Amnesty International that “it has been[bía] Completely abolished the application of the death penalty to minors for crimes punishable by optional punishment under Islamic law.”
In November 2022, the country resumed executions for drug offences, thus ending the moratorium on such executions which, according to the Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission, eIt was in force since January 2020.
Six of the seven youths were found guilty of terrorist offenses for acts such as participating in anti-government protests or attending the burial of people killed by security forces.
The six youths sentenced to death belong to the Shiite minority, who routinely face discrimination and grossly unfair trials on vague and widely diverse charges related to their opposition to the government.
Yousef al-Manasif, who was between the ages of 15 and 18 at the time of the alleged crime, was sentenced to death by a Specialized Criminal Court in November 2022.
According to the indictment and sentence, which Amnesty International has been able to read, al-Manasif was found guilty of various charges. Among them are: “Destabilizing the social fabric and national cohesion, and participating and promoting participation in sit-ins and protests that disturb the cohesion and security of the State.” His relatives stated that they were not allowed to see or visit him until six after his arrest, during which time they claim he was held in solitary confinement. The appeals court upheld his conviction in March 2023.
Another of the defendants, Abdullah al-Darazi, was 17 years old at the time of the alleged offence. Among the charges for which he was sentenced were “participating […] in riots in Al Qatif, and chant anti-state slogans and sow chaos” and “attack security agents with Molotov cocktails”. Abdullah al-Darazi told the court that he had been held for three years awaiting trial and was not allowed access to a lawyer either during the investigation phase or while he was in pre-trial detention.
According to procedural documents, to which Amnesty International has had access, Abdullah al-Darazi told the judge: “I request an independent medical evaluation to demonstrate the torture to which I have been subjected. […]. The records of the Dammam hospital investigation unit show that I continue to receive treatment as a result of the blows to my ears while being interrogated, and I continue to request a medical report on it.”
The court did not conduct an independent medical investigation or investigate Abdullah’s allegations of torture; instead, in August 2022, the Specialized Criminal Court of Appeals upheld the death sentence against him.
“Executing persons who were under 18 years of age at the time of committing the crime for which they have been convicted, or for crimes unrelated to intentional homicide, or after unfair trials because, for example, they were based on confessions obtained through torture and other ill-treatment violates international law. The death penalty is the maximum exponent of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment”, Morayef has maintained.
In the same letter sent in May to Amnesty International by the Saudi Human Rights Commission, it revealed that in 2022 196 people had been executed. This number of executions is much higher than that reported by the official Saudi news agency and that recorded by Amnesty International in 2022, which was 148.
“The discrepancy between the number of executions provided by the Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission and that published by the Saudi News Agency indicates that the scale of executions is even worse than that usually reported by the Saudi News Agency. If the Saudi authorities want their declared plans for reform to be taken seriously, the first step is to establish a moratorium on executions and ensure that the courts will not admit any statements obtained under torture,” Morayef said.
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