News - Middle East: Saudi Arabia has executed at least 100 people so far this year, according to the nonprofit Amnesty International (AI).

Amnesty has described it as a “relentless killing spree” despite the promises of the monarchy to check the application of the death penalty.

“In clear contrast to Saudi Arabia’s repeated promises to limit its use of the death penalty, the Saudi authorities have already executed 100 people this year, revealing their chilling disregard for the right to life,” AI’s Middle East and North Africa Director Heba Morayef said in a statement.

The rights watchdog said its tally comes from reports published by the official Saudi news agency SPA, underlining that “the real number of executions may be higher.”

It added that this new wave of executions “raises serious fears for the lives of young men on death row who were under 18 at the time of the crimes.”

Morayef also said his organization has documented a large number of death sentences “anything from a few tweets to drug-related offenses.”

Saudi Arabia has executed an average of four people per week in 2023, some of them for possession or trafficking of narcotics even though “death penalty is prohibited under international law for drug-related offenses.”

Human rights organizations have denounced that the rate of executions in the Arab country has nearly doubled since the arrival of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman seven years ago.

During this period, more than a thousand people have been sentenced to death.

In 2022, Saudi Arabia executed a total of 196 people – 81 of them in a single day -, representing the highest annual number of executions in the country in 30 years, according to AI. EFE