Saudi Arabia executed 81 men including seven Yemenis and one Syrian on Saturday, the interior ministry said, in the kingdom’s biggest mass execution in decades.
The number dwarfed the 67 executions reported there in all of 2021 and the 27 in 2020. Offences ranged from joining militant groups to holding “deviant beliefs”, the ministry said in a statement.
“These individuals, totalling 81, were convicted of various crimes including murdering innocent men, women and children,” the statement read. “Crimes committed by these individuals also include pledging allegiance to foreign terrorist organisations, such as Daesh, al-Qaeda and the Houthis,” it added.
The ministry did not say how the executions were carried out.
The men included 37 Saudi nationals who were found guilty in a single case for attempting to assassinate security officers and targeting police stations and convoys, the statement added. The mass execution is likely to bring back attention to Saudi Arabia’s human rights record at a time when world powers have been focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. –Reuters
