Saudi Arabian interior ministry declared that six Iranian nationals had been executed for narcotics smuggling. It takes place following a year during which an all-time high total of executions was conducted by the kingdom. Because they “secretly brought hashish” into the country, the six Iranians were put to death in Dammam. In an announcement, the Saudi government verified the reports, although it did not say when the executions took place.
Iran summoned the ambassador of Saudi Arabia in Tehran after the killings. The Iranian foreign ministry expressed a tough condemnation at the outrageous breach of the regulations and standards governing global law.
Last year, Saudi Arabia executed no less than 338 people. The amount represents the largest number of death penalties in generations and is literally double that of its previous year.
According to Amnesty International, past records were in the 1990s with 192 and 196 executions. Since that decade, AI has been recording killings in Saudi Arabia. According to the AFP count, more than 117 of those executed in 202s were convicted drug dealers. Convicted drug dealers have been executed in a frenzy. At the same time, in 2022, the monarchy lifted a ban on the death sentence for drug offenses.
The government started a widely reported anti-drug program in 2023. A number of operations and indictments were part of the initiative. The demand for the addictive psychostimulant captagon has grown significantly in the country in the previous years. Throughout the civil conflict, Syria manufactured large amounts of the substance.
Over thirty global and regional rights organizations condemned the acute rise in death sentences for drug-related convictions last year. A further record is that of 338 executions in 2024, foreigners amounted for a-third of the total.
Twenty-five Yemenis, twenty-four Pakistanis, seventeen Egyptians, sixteen Syrians, fourteen Nigerians, thirteen Jordanians, and seven Ethiopians were among them. The world was outraged when Saudi Arabia killed 81 individuals for “terrorist crimes” on just one day in March 2022. Amnesty, expected to release its 2024 statistics in the coming weeks, says that Riyadh killed more people in 2023 than almost all countries in the world.
According to Saudi officials, the death sentence is only applied when all other options for review have been explored and is required to preserve the rule of law.
Following demonstrator attacks on its diplomatic offices in the capital and Mashhad, the monarchy broke off ties with Tehran in 2016. The killing of a Shiite Muslim preacher infuriated the Iranian demonstrators. Following a reunion mediated by Beijing, diplomatic relations were reestablished after seven years.
