The Ministry of Inside’s assertion stated the crimes of these executed included homicide; pledging allegiance to international terrorist teams, together with the Islamic State and Al Qaeda; and touring to affix such teams, in addition to the vaguely worded offense of “concentrating on residents within the Kingdom.”
Others had been convicted of concentrating on authorities staff and “very important financial websites,” smuggling weapons into the dominion, killing regulation enforcement officers and planting land mines that the ministry stated had been supposed to be used towards police autos.
“The Kingdom will proceed to take a strict and unwavering stance towards terrorism and extremist ideologies that threaten the steadiness of the complete world,” the ministry stated.
The ministry stated the defendants had been capable of train “their full rights beneath Saudi regulation” earlier than Saudi courts, together with the appropriate to an legal professional. However the European Saudi Group for Human Rights stated it had documented circumstances through which defendants had been denied entry to a lawyer, tortured and held incommunicado.
“The world ought to know by now that when Mohammed bin Salman guarantees reform, bloodshed is sure to observe,” Soraya Bauwens, the deputy director of Reprieve, an advocacy group that tracks executions in Saudi Arabia, stated in a press release on Saturday.
Noting that Western nations had been trying to Saudi Arabia, one of many world’s largest oil producers, to assist make up for the shortfall in oil provides as many nations shun power from Russia due to President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, she added, “We can’t present our revulsion for Putin’s atrocities by rewarding these of the crown prince.”
Rights teams stated the variety of executions carried out on Saturday far outstripped these put to loss of life within the kingdom’s two most up-to-date mass executions: one in 2019, through which 37 had been killed, and the opposite in 2016, when 47 had been executed.
Asmaa al-Omran contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.