RIYADH, Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 81 people convicted of crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant and terrorist groups — the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom in its modern history.
The number of executed
surpassed even the toll of a January 1980 mass execution for the 63 militants
convicted of seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, the worst-ever militant
attack to target the kingdom and Islam’s holiest pilgrimage site.
It was unclear why the kingdom
chose Saturday for the executions, though they came as much of the world’s
attention remained focused on Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The number of death penalty
cases being carried out in Saudi Arabia had dropped during the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the kingdom continued to behead convicts under King Salman and his
assertive 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 murdering of innocent men, women and
children”.Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman
The kingdom also said some of
those executed were members of al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and also
backers of Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
A Saudi-led coalition has been
battling the Iran-backed Houthis since 2015 in neighbouring Yemen.
Dozens killed and injured in
Saudi-led airstrikes in northwestern Yemen
Yemen faces a famine as deadly as Ethiopia’s during the 1980s, says refugee
council head
Those executed included 73 Saudis, seven Yemenis and one Syrian. The report did
not say where the executions took place.
“The accused were provided
with the right to an attorney and were guaranteed their full rights under Saudi
law during the judicial process, which found them guilty of committing multiple
heinous crimes,” the Saudi Press Agency said.
“The kingdom will continue to
take a strict and unwavering stance against terrorism and extremist ideologies
that threaten the stability of the entire world,” the report added.
It did not say how the
prisoners were executed, though death-row inmates typically are beheaded in
Saudi Arabia.
An announcement by Saudi state
television described those executed as having “followed the footsteps of Satan”
in carrying out their crimes.
The executions drew immediate
international criticism.
“The world should know by now
that when Mohammed bin Salman promises reform, bloodshed is bound to follow,”
said Soraya Bauwens, the deputy director of Reprieve, a London-based advocacy
group.
Ali Adubusi, the director of
the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, alleged that some of those
executed had been tortured and faced trials “carried out in secret”.
“These executions are the
opposite of justice,” he said.
The kingdom’s last mass
execution came in January 2016, when the kingdom executed 47 people, including
a prominent opposition Shiite cleric who had rallied demonstrations in the
domain.
In 2019, the kingdom beheaded
37 Saudi citizens, predominantly minority Shiites, in a mass execution across
the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes.
It also publicly nailed the
severed body and head of a convicted extremist to a pole as a warning to
others. Such crucifixions after execution, while rare, do occur in the kingdom.
Activists, including Ali
al-Ahmed of the US-based Institute for Gulf Affairs and the group Democracy for
the Arab World Now said they believe that over three dozen of those executed
Saturday were Shiites.
However, the Saudi statement
did not identify the faiths of those killed.
Shiites, who live primarily in
the kingdom’s oil-rich east, have long complained of being second-class
citizens. Executions of Shiites in the past have stirred regional unrest.
Saudi Arabia meanwhile remains
engaged in diplomatic talks with its Shiite regional rival Iran to try to ease yearslong
tensions.
The 1979 seizure of the Grand
Mosque remains a crucial moment in the history of the oil-rich kingdom.
A band of ultraconservative
Saudi Sunni militants took the Grand Mosque, home to the cube-shaped Kaaba that
Muslims pray toward five times a day, demanding the Al Saud royal family
abdicate.
A two-week siege that followed
ended with an official death toll of 229 killed. The kingdom’s rulers soon
further embraced Wahhabism, an ultraconservative Islamic doctrine.
Since taking power, Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman has increasingly liberalised life in the kingdom,
opening movie theatres, allowing women to drive and defanging the country’s
once-feared religious police.
However, US intelligence
agencies believe the crown prince also ordered Washington Post columnist Jamal
Khashoggi’s slaying and dismemberment and overseeing airstrikes in Yemen that
killed hundreds of civilians.
In excerpts from an interview
with The Atlantic magazine, the crown prince discussed the death penalty,
saying a “high percentage” of executions had been halted by paying so-called
“blood money” settlements to aggrieved families.
“We got rid of [the death
penalty] except for one category, and this one is written in the Quran — and we
cannot do anything about it, even if we wished to do something — because it is
clear teaching in the Quran,” the prince said.
“If someone killed someone,
another person, the family of that person has the right — after going to the
court — to apply capital punishment unless they forgive him. Or if someone
threatens the life of many people, that means he has to be punished by the
death penalty.”
“Regardless if I like it or
not, I don’t have the power to change it,” bin Salman said. - Euronews
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