Saudi Arabia executed four people on Thursday, bringing the number of executions to 100 since the beginning of the year, according to an AFP count based on official statements.
These latest executions, reported by the Saudi press agency, come after oenegés and international organizations condemned the execution of 81 people in one day last week in Saudi Arabia.
Of the 100 executions, three coincided with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. The politician went to Riyadh in the hope of increasing crude oil production and thus curbing the price increase caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On Saturday, the execution of 81 people in one day — accused of several charges, including terrorism-related crimes — exceeded the total of 69 killed in 2021.
The oenegé Human Rights Watch considered that “it is very likely that none of these men have had a fair trial” and called the execution a “brutal demonstration of Saudi Arabia's autocratic regime”.
More than half of the men executed belonged to the Shia minority “which has long suffered systemic discrimination and violence by the government,” HRW said in a statement.
According to Riyadh, the executed men, including seven Yemenis and one Syrian, were convicted of crimes related to “terrorism” and their trials were “supervised by a total of 13 judges”.
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