Saudi Arabia has executed eight people in a single day, state media said, amid a surge in the use of the death penalty in the Gulf monarchy particularly over drug-related convictions.<\/p>\n
The official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported that four Somalis and three Ethiopians were executed on Saturday in the southern region of Najran “for smuggling hashish into the kingdom”.<\/p>\n
One Saudi man was executed for the murder of his mother, SPA said.<\/p>\n
Since the beginning of 2025, Saudi Arabia has executed 230 people, according to an AFP tally of official reports.<\/p>\n
Most of those executions — 154 people — were on drug-related charges.<\/p>\n
The pace of executions puts the kingdom on track to surpass last year’s record of 338 instances of capital punishment.<\/p>\n
Analysts link the spike to the kingdom’s “war on drugs” launched in 2023, with many of those first arrested only now being executed following their legal proceedings and convictions.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia resumed executions for drug offences at the end of 2022, after suspending the use of the death penalty in narcotics cases for around three years.<\/p>\n
It executed 19 people in 2022, two in 2023, and 117 in 2024 for narcotics-related crimes, according to the AFP tally.<\/p>\n
Activists say the kingdom’s continued embrace of capital punishment undermines the image of a more open, tolerant society that is central to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 reform agenda.<\/p>\n
Saudi authorities say the death penalty is necessary to maintain public order and is only used after all avenues for appeal have been exhausted.<\/p>\n
bur\/ami<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saudi Arabia has executed eight people in a single day, state media said, amid a surge in the use of the death penalty in the Gulf monarchy particularly over drug-related convictions. The official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported that four Somalis and three Ethiopians were executed on Saturday in the southern region of Najran “for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[306,1062,860],"class_list":["post-5205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional","tag-crime","tag-execution","tag-saudi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}