[ad_1]
Saudi Arabia executed 81 men on Saturday, including seven Yemenis of a Syrian man, on charges of terrorism or “deviant beliefs,” authorities said in the first mass execution in decades.
Today’s number lags far behind 67 executions carried out across the kingdom in 2021 and 27 carried out in 2020.
“These individuals, in a total of 81, were convicted of various crimes including the murder of innocent people, women and children,” the interior ministry said in a statement.
“Among their crimes were also the pledge of allegiance to foreign terrorist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda or Huthi in Yemen,” the statement said.
Some of them had traveled to conflict zones to join “terrorist organizations”, the ministry said in a statement, without specifying how the executions were carried out.
Among them were 37 citizens of Saudi Arabia who had been found guilty of killing security officers at stations or vehicles. The executions were not public.
The kingdom executed 63 people in one day in 1980, a year after militants took control of the Great Mosque of Mecca, according to state media reports.
Human rights groups have accused Saudi Arabia of unfair political and religious repression laws, as well as the use of the death penalty, which has also been used against juveniles on several occasions.
Saudi Arabia denies allegations of human rights abuses and says the defendants were entitled to a lawyer and full freedom of defense during the trial.
top channel
[ad_2]
Source link
