Shiite executed in Saudi Arabia for demonstrating against the kingdom

Published on : 06/16/2021 – 02:21

A 26-year-old man belonging to the Shiite minority was executed on Tuesday (June 15) in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Mustafa al-Darwish is accused of launching an “armed revolt” against the Saudi leadership and for “destabilizing the security” of the kingdom over his participation in anti-government protests as a teenager, the news agency reported. Saudi official SPA press.

He was arrested in May 2015 for alleged participation in demonstrations during the Arab Spring uprisings between 2011 and 2012, noted several NGOs including Amnesty International, who stressed that he was at the time only 17 or 18 years old. .

“By carrying out this execution, the Saudi authorities have shown a deplorable contempt for the right to life,” Amnesty said in a statement. “Mustafa al-Darwish is the latest victim of a severely flawed Saudi justice system, which regularly sentences people to death after unfair trials based on confessions obtained under torture.”

According to the British NGO Reprieve, his family learned of his execution by “reading the news on the Internet”. Reprieve also claimed that the young man was placed in solitary confinement and tortured while in prison.

Empty promises of reform

Saudi Arabia announced in April 2020 that the death penalty would no longer be imposed on people convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18. Referring to a royal decree, the country’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) had specified that they would be sentenced to a maximum of ten years imprisonment in a center for young offenders.

“Once again, the Saudi authorities have shown that their claims regarding the abolition of the death penalty for children are worthless,” said Ali al-Dubaisi, director of the European-Saudi Human Rights Organization. ‘Male (ESOHR).

“The cruelty of this execution, without prior information, for the crime of participating in demonstrations as a teenager, illustrates the true face of (Crown Prince) of Saudi Arabia Mohammed ben Salman,” he said. noted, deploring “the continual empty promises of reform”.

The prince, de facto ruler of the country, seeks to extinguish international criticism of the human rights situation in Arabia and the opacity of its judicial system in order to be able to attract international investment and foreign tourists.

The kingdom has one of the highest execution rates in the world. The HRC reported twenty-seven executions in 2020, an 85% drop from the previous year, thanks in particular to the moratorium on drug-related convictions. According to ESOHR, twenty-six people have been executed since early 2021.

With AFP