Saudi Arabia has executed two people who were sentenced to death for drug smuggling.
This is announced by the official news agency in the country on Thursday.
One was a Saudi Arabian citizen who has been executed for smuggling amphetamines.
The other is a Pakistani citizen who was sentenced to death for smuggling heroin.
Thus, Saudi Arabia has executed at least 106 people this year, according to an estimate from the AFP news agency.
78 of them are Saudi citizens. But eight Yemenis, seven Pakistanis, five Ethiopians, three Syrians and one person from Sri Lanka, Nigeria, India, Jordan and Sudan have also been executed.
Two of the 106 executed were women.
By comparison, at this time last year, at least 74 people had been executed.
In total, in 2023, at least 170 people were executed in Saudi Arabia.
This makes the country one of the countries in the world that executes the most people. In 2023, the number of executions was higher only in China and Iran.
Earlier this week, the European-Saudi Organization for Human Rights criticized the conservative kingdom for carrying out an execution on average every two days.
– One hundred executions in 196 days shows the Saudi government’s insistence on using the death penalty on a large scale – contrary to international law and the country’s official obligations – it was said on Monday in a statement from the organization based in Berlin.
/ritzau/AFP
Source: www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk
