RIYADH—Saudi Arabia executed 81 men on Saturday who were “found guilty of committing multiple heinous crimes,” the state SPA news agency said, marking a record number of executions for the kingdom in decades.
Offences ranged from joining terrorist groups to holding “deviant beliefs,” the interior ministry said in a statement.
“These individuals, totalling 81, were convicted of various crimes including murdering innocent men, women and children,” the statement read.
“Crimes committed by these individuals also include pledging allegiance to foreign terrorist organisations, such as ISIS, al-Qaeda and the Houthis,” it added.
The ministry did not say how the executions were carried out.
Those executed included 73 Saudis, seven Yemenis and one Syrian. Among the Saudis, were involved in a single case for attempting to assassinate security officers and targeting police stations and convoys, the statement added.
SPA said the accused were provided with the right to an attorney and were guaranteed their full rights under Saudi law during the judicial process.
The convictions were for “targeting government personnel and vital economic sites, the killing of law enforcement officers and maiming their bodies, and planting land mines to target police vehicles,” the SPA said.
“The convictions include crimes of kidnapping, torture, rape, smuggling arms, and bombs into the kingdom,” it added.
The number of executions scheduled dwarfed the 67 reported in all of 2021 and the 27 in 2020.
Rights groups have accused Saudi Arabia of enforcing restrictive laws on political and religious expression, and criticised it for using the death penalty, including for defendants arrested when they were minors.
“There are prisoners of conscience on Saudi death row, and others arrested as children or charged with non-violent crimes,” Soraya Bauwens, deputy director of anti-death penalty charity Reprieve, said in a statement.
“We fear for every one of them following this brutal display of impunity,” she added.
Saudi Arabia denies accusations of human rights abuses and says it protects its national security through its laws.
“The kingdom will continue to take a strict and unwavering stance against terrorism and extremist ideologies that threaten stability,” the news agency added.
The kingdom executed 63 people in one day in 1980, a year after terrorists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, according to state media reports.
A total of 47 people, including prominent Shi’ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr, were executed in one day in 2016.
