Saudi Arabia's strong man and Crown Prince: Mohamed bin Salman
Photo: Amr Nabil / AP
The conservative Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been one of the countries with the highest number of executed death sentences for years.
According to the state human rights commission HRC, 27 people were executed last year.
That is a decrease of 85 percent compared to the previous year, according to a communication from the commission subordinate to the Saudi royal family.
The sharp decline is due to judicial reforms.
Whether the numbers are authentic cannot be independently verified.
According to research by the independent human rights organization Human Rights Watch, at least 184 people were executed in 2019.
The human rights activists have not yet been able to determine figures for 2020.
Reforms reduce executions
In 2018, Saudi Arabia abolished the death penalty for drug offenses in an extensive reform.
The punishments for minors have also been lessened.
Most recently, in the spring of 2020, the royal family affirmed in a decree not to execute any more convicts under 18 years of age.
The death penalty would no longer be imposed on defendants who were minors at the time of the crime, it said at the time.
Both steps were part of the reforms led by Mohammed bin Salman.
The Crown Prince, who has de facto determined the country's politics since 2017, is striving for an economic and, in part, social opening of the country.
With the reforms Salman presents himself as a modernizer, but he repeatedly showed his brutal side.
He is said to be responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and has been waging a war in Yemen that has been going on for several years.
Human rights activists also criticize the fact that Salman is increasingly taking action against critics in the country.
Human rights activists question the implementation of decrees
Human rights activists also repeatedly question whether the reforms are serious.
"Human Rights Watch" complains that the decree announced last spring to abolish the death penalty for minors has still not been implemented.
Accordingly, it was neither published in the state media nor in the official announcements of the royal family.
But this is the practice for all other decrees.
It was also not mentioned in an overview published at the end of the year with important decrees of the year.
The organization fears that judges can still use this loophole.
There are currently five people in custody who received the death penalty as minors.
Their judgments have not yet been overturned.
The Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission, on the other hand, told Reuters news agency that the decree had been implemented and valid.
Icon: The mirror
mrc / AP / Reuters
