Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Democracy Center raised alarm on Monday over the increasing use of the death penalty without due process in Saudi Arabia this year, calling the practice a means to crush peaceful dissent. They highlighted the executions of Turki al-Jasser, Abdullah al-Shamri, Salman al-Odah, Muhammad al-Ghamdi, and the mass execution of 81 men in 2022 as exemplifying the pattern of abuse.

Saudi Arabia has executed at least 100 foreign nationals this year and a total of 189 people, with the majority being for drug-related charges. Joey Shea, researcher for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Human Rights Watch, stressed the gravity of the situation, saying, “Saudi authorities have weaponized the country’s justice system to carry out a terrifying number of executions in 2025. The surge in executions is just the latest evidence of the brutally autocratic rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.”

Central to this is the Arab Charter on Human Rights, Article 6 of which obligates Saudi Arabia to use the death penalty for only the most serious crimes. Similarly, Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) limits the application of capital punishment to only the most serious crimes. Saudi Arabia has not acceded to the ICCPR, but has ratified the Arab Charter on Human Rights.

The senior director of countering authoritarianism at the Middle East Democracy Center, Abdullah Alaoudh, stated, “Behind closed doors, Saudi Arabia is executing peaceful activists and journalists following politicized trials.These state-sanctioned killings are an assault on basic human rights and dignity that the world cannot afford to ignore.”

This also comes after Amnesty International expressed concern in April about the dramatic increase in executions for drug-related offenses in Saudi Arabia. Further, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement in late 2022 on the alarming rate of executions in Saudi Arabia. This also comes after both Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Democracy Center have been criticizing rampant abuses in the Saudi Arabian criminal justice system, such as torture, forced confessions, and long periods of detention without trial.