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Saudi Arabia will execute twice as many people in 2022 as it did last year, according to an AFP tally, underscoring an increase in the death penalty condemned by human rights groups.
The latest execution was a Jordanian national convicted of smuggling amphetamine pills, the official Saudi Press Agency announced late Thursday.
Agence France-Presse statistics show that the case has a total of 138 executions this year, up from 69 people last year. In 2020, 27 executions were carried out, compared with 187 in 2019.
The milestone came a week after Saudi Arabia announced it had executed two Pakistani nationals for smuggling heroin, the first death penalty for drug offenses in nearly three years.
Amnesty International condemned the resumption of executions for drug offenses, a departure from Saudi Arabia’s January 2021 moratorium on executions for such cases.
“The lives of those on death row for drug-related crimes and other crimes are at risk,” Amnesty International said in a statement last week. “No one should suffer, regardless of the crime committed. Such cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.”
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Ten drug-related executions have been reported in the past week.
Reports did not detail how these executions were carried out, but beheadings are often carried out in the wealthy Gulf kingdom.
Saudi Arabia sparked an international outcry when it executed 81 people in a single day in March for terrorism-related crimes.
The conservative kingdom is not the only country in the region to enforce the death penalty.
Neighboring Kuwait executed seven people for murder on Wednesday, the country’s first executions since 2017.
On Thursday, Liz Throssell, a spokeswoman for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the executions in Kuwait were “disturbing” and that the “backslide by the Kuwaiti authorities is deeply regrettable”.
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