Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 81 people convicted of crimes ranging from murder to membership in militant groups. It is the largest known mass execution in the kingdom’s modern history.
The number of executions has even exceeded the toll of a mass execution in January 1980 for the 63 militants convicted of seizing the Grand Mosque of Mecca in 1979, the biggest militant attack ever on the kingdom and Islam’s holiest site.
Why the kingdom chose Saturday for the executions was unclear. They came, however, as world attention remained focused on the war in Ukraine and as the United States hoped to drive down record gasoline prices. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is also reportedly planning a trip to Saudi Arabia next week over oil prices.
The number of death sentences in Saudi Arabia has plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic, although the kingdom has continued to behead convicts under King Salman and his authoritarian son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced Saturday’s executions, saying they included those “convicted of various crimes, including the murder of innocent men, women and children”.
The kingdom also said some of those executed were members of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group, as well as supporters of Yemen’s Houthi rebels. A Saudi-led coalition is fighting the Houthis, backed by Iran since 2015 in neighboring Yemen, who aim to restore the internationally recognized government to power.
Among those executed were 73 Saudis, 7 Yemenis and 1 Syrian. The report does not specify where the executions took place.
“The defendants were given the right to a lawyer and were guaranteed all their rights under Saudi law during the judicial process, which found them guilty of committing multiple heinous crimes that resulted in a large number of deaths. among civilians and law enforcement,” the Saudi Press Agency said.
“The kingdom will continue to take a strict and unwavering stance against terrorism and extremist ideologies that threaten stability around the world,” the report added. It is not specified how the prisoners were executed, although those on death row are usually beheaded in Saudi Arabia.
A Saudi state television ad described those executed as “following in Satan’s footsteps” in committing their crimes.
International reviews
“The world should know by now that when Mohammed bin Salman promises reform, bloodshed will follow,” said Soraya Bauwens, deputy director of Reprieve, a London-based advocacy group.
Ali Adubusi, the director of the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, claimed that some of those executed had been tortured and faced trials “conducted in secret”.
“These executions are the opposite of justice,” he said.
Executions of Shias
The kingdom’s last mass execution was in January 2016, when the kingdom executed 47 people, including a prominent Shia opposition cleric who had staged protests in the country.
In 2019, the kingdom beheaded 37 Saudi citizens, mostly from the Shia minority, in a mass execution across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes. He also publicly nailed the severed body and head of a convicted extremist to a post as a warning. Such post-execution crucifixions, though rare, do occur in the country.
Activists including Ali al-Ahmed of the American Institute of Gulf Affairs and the group Democracy for the Arab World Now said they believed the more than three dozen people executed on Saturday were also Shiites. The Saudi statement, however, did not identify the confessions of those killed.
Shiites, who mainly live in the oil-rich east of the kingdom, have long complained of being treated like second-class citizens. Executions of Shiites in the past have sparked regional unrest. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, remains engaged in diplomatic talks with regional Shia rival Iran to try to ease tensions that have lasted for years.
Capture of the Grand Mosque
The capture of the Great Mosque in 1979 remains a crucial moment in the history of the kingdom.
A group of ultra-conservative Saudi Sunni militants had taken over the Grand Mosque, which houses the cube-shaped Kaaba to which Muslims pray five times a day, demanding the abdication of the Al Saud royal family. A two-week siege followed and ended with an official death toll of 229. The rulers of the kingdom quickly embraced Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative Islamic doctrine.
Since taking power, Crown Prince Mohammed, under the leadership of his father, has increasingly liberalized life in the kingdom, opening cinemas, allowing women to drive and reducing the powers of the religious police. once feared in the country.
However, US intelligence agencies believe the crown prince also ordered the murder and dismemberment of ‘Washington Post’ columnist Jamal Khashoggi, while overseeing airstrikes in Yemen that killed hundreds of civilians.
In excerpts from an interview with the magazine The Atlanticthe crown prince raised the death penalty, saying a ‘high percentage’ of executions had been stopped thanks to the payment of so-called ‘blood money’ to grieving families.
“Well, about the death penalty, we got rid of all that except one category, and that’s written in the Quran, and we can’t do anything about it, even if we wanted to do something. thing, because it is a clear teaching in the Quran,” the prince said, according to a transcript later released by Saudi Arabian satellite news channel Al-Arabiya.
“If someone has killed someone, another person, the family of that person has the right, after going to court, to apply the death penalty, unless they forgive him. Or if someone threatens the life of many people, that means he should be punished with the death penalty. It doesn’t matter if I like it or not (the law), I don’t have the power to change it,” he explained.
With information from Aya Batrawy in Dubai.