Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 81 people convicted of crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant 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 of 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 site.
It was not clear why the kingdom choose Saturday for the executions, although they came as much of the world’s attention remained focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine — and as the US hopes to lower record-high gasoline prices as energy prices spike worldwide. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reportedly planning a trip to Saudi Arabia next week over oil prices as well.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The number of death penalties carried out in Saudi Arabia had dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, although the kingdom continued to behead convicts under Saudi King Salman and his assertive son, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced Saturday’s executions, saying that they included those “convicted of various crimes, including the murdering of innocent men, women and children.”
The kingdom said some of those executed were members of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group and backers of Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Those executed included 73 Saudi Arabians, 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 that left a large number of civilians and law enforcement officers dead,” 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.”
It did not say how the prisoners were executed, although death row inmates are usually beheaded in Saudi Arabia.
An announcement on 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.
European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights director Ali Adubusi said 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 occurred in January 2016, when it executed 47 people, including a prominent opposition Shiite cleric who had rallied demonstrations.
In 2019, the kingdom beheaded 37 Saudi Arabians, most of them 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 criminal to a pole as a warning to others.
Such crucifixions after execution, while rare, do occur in the kingdom.
Human rights advocates — including Ali al-Ahmed, an expert at the US-based Institute for Gulf Affairs and the Democracy for the Arab World Now group — said they believe that more than three dozen of those executed on Saturday were Shiites.
However, the news agency 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 treated as second-class citizens.
The 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque remains a crucial moment in the history of the oil-rich kingdom.
A goup of ultraconservative 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. The kingdom’s rulers soon further embraced Wahhabism, an ultraconservative Islamic doctrine.
Since becoming the kingdom’s de facto leader, the crown prince has increasingly liberalized life in the kingdom, opening movie theaters, allowing women to drive and defanging the country’s once-feared religious police.
However, US intelligence agencies believe that he ordered the slaying and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, while overseeing airstrikes in Yemen that killed hundreds of civilians.
In excerpts of an interview with The Atlantic magazine, the crown prince discussed the death penalty, saying a “high percentage” of executions had been halted through the payment of so-called “blood money” settlements to grieving families.
“Well about the death penalty, we got rid of all of it, 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,” he is quoted as saying.
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