Saudi Arabia: Mass Execution of 37 Men. Most from Shia Community, Convicted in Unfair Trials

@ Human Rights Watch, April 24, 2019 7:52AM EDT

(Beirut,) – Saudi Arabia’s government announced the mass execution of 37 men on April 23, 2019 in various parts of the country, Human Rights Watch said today. At least 33 of the 37 were from the country’s minority Shia community and had been convicted following unfair trials for various alleged crimes, including protest-related offenses, espionage, and terrorism. The mass execution was the largest since January 2016, when Saudi Arabia executed 47 men for terrorism offenses.

The Specialized Criminal Court convicted 25 of the 37 men in two mass trials, known as the “Qatif 24 case” and the “Iran spy case,” both of which included allegations that authorities extracted confessions through torture. One of the executed Sunni men received the harshest punishment under Islamic law, which includes beheading and public display of the beheaded corpse (salb). With this mass execution, Saudi Arabia carried out over 100 executions so far in 2019, including 40 for drug offenses, a much higher rate than previous years [....]