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Saudi Arabia is converting death sentences to prison terms for young men

2021-02-08T13:07:18.999Z


For years, Saudi Arabia has been one of the countries with the highest number of executions. But after reform, the death penalty was severely restricted. Now the nephew of a famous clergyman benefits from it.


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Iranian demonstrators in 2016 during the protest against the execution of the cleric Nimr al-Nimr (archive image)

Photo: AP / dpa

For two years there has been no death penalty for certain crimes in Saudi Arabia - but several prisoners had to fear until the very end whether they would still be executed.

Now the Conservative Kingdom has converted the death sentences to ten-year prison sentences for three young men, including the nephew of the prominent Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Ali al-Nimr and two other men were arrested on charges of terrorism after participating in protests critical of the government in the country.

They would now be released in 2022, announced the state-controlled human rights commission.

The background to this is the royal decree of March last year that abolished the death penalty for minors in Saudi Arabia.

Ali al-Nimr was arrested at the age of 17 after participating in the protests.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described his trial as unfair and said that his lawyer was not allowed to represent him adequately.

His mother told the human rights organization Amnesty International that Al-Nimr's statements at the trial had been obtained through torture.

Execution as diplomatic leverage

Ali al-Nimr's uncle Nimr al-Nimr was a prominent clergyman and the central figure in the 2011 protests, which the police violently ended.

In 2016, he and 46 other people were executed as a "terrorist".

His beheading caused massive tensions between Saudi Arabia and warring Iran.

Riyadh severed diplomatic relations with Tehran after an angry crowd stormed the country's embassy in Tehran.

Thousands of Shiites also demonstrated against the execution in Iraq, Bahrain and the Indian part of Kashmir.

Saudi Arabia has long been criticized for its prison system.

Some of the convicted were beheaded, shot or whipped in public.

In 2019, the strictly conservative kingdom was the country with the most executions in the world after China and Iran, according to Amnesty International.

In 2020, however, the number of executions fell sharply.

This is also due to the modernizations in the country promoted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

In 2018, Saudi Arabia abolished the death penalty for drug offenses in an extensive reform.

The punishments for minors have also been lessened.

Human rights activists remain skeptical

Crown Prince Salman, who has de facto determined the country's politics since 2017, is striving to open up the country economically and in some areas socially.

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.

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.

For a long time, however, it was unclear whether Saudi Arabia would actually implement the decree.

Until recently, human rights activists warned that those detained were still at risk of death.

Icon: The mirror

mrc / dpa

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-02-08

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