Rigid criminal law applies in Saudi Arabia. In addition to China and Iran, Saudi Arabia is one of the countries with the highest number of executions worldwide.
Riyadh (dpa) - The Islamic conservative Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has abolished the death penalty for minors. King Salman had specified this in a decree, the Saudi Arabian-funded Al Arabiya news channel reported on Sunday evening.
The state-controlled Human Rights Commission said this reform would help create more modern criminal law. Death sentences would now be converted to prison terms of up to ten years. This applies to all punishments for perpetrators under the age of 18.
The Human Rights Commission had previously said Saudi Arabia had also banned flogging as a punishment. The Supreme Court of the Kingdom had decided that.
Rigid criminal law applies in Saudi Arabia. Death sentences are imposed, among other things, for terrorist allegations and drug-related offenses. In addition to China and Iran, Saudi Arabia is one of the countries with the highest number of executions worldwide. According to the human rights organization Amnesty International, 184 people were executed there in 2019 - an increase of 23 percent and the highest number that Amnesty has ever documented for the authoritarian country.
Critics blame Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in particular, the country's actually strong man, for the human rights situation. They also see him as the mastermind behind the brutal murder of the government-critical journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia has the presidency of the G20 group of leading economic powers this year.
Al-Arabija report
Opinion on the Human Rights Commission
