Saudi Arabia announced today the execution of six Iranians sentenced to death for drug trafficking, after a record 338 executions were carried out during the year, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on official data cited by BTA.
The six Iranians were executed in the city of Dammam, in the eastern part of the kingdom, for "smuggling hashish" into Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Interior Ministry announced. The date of the execution was not specified.
In 2024, the country executed 117 people for drug trafficking, including 85 foreigners.
In 2023 Saudi authorities have launched a crackdown on drugs with a series of raids and arrests. The conservative Gulf monarchy is a major market for Captagon, an amphetamine-type drug produced in Syria and Lebanon, according to the United Nations.
Executions of traffickers have increased since a moratorium on the crime ended two years ago. In total, Saudi Arabia executed 338 people in 2024, according to AFP, compared with 170 the previous year.
According to Amnesty International, which tracks executions in the wealthy Gulf monarchy, which has enforced strict Islamic law since 1990, the highest annual figure so far was 196 executions in 2022. and 192 in 1995.
According to the NGO, in 2023 the kingdom was the country that executed the most prisoners in the world, after China and Iran.
Of the 338 executed in 2024, 129 were foreigners, which is another record. Among them were 25 Yemenis, 24 Pakistanis, 17 Egyptians, 16 Syrians, 14 Nigerians, 13 Jordanians and seven Ethiopians. Sudanese, Indians, Afghans, one Sri Lankan, one Eritrean, one Bangladeshi and one Filipino were also executed. Most of them were convicted of drug trafficking.
In September, more than thirty Arab and international human rights organizations condemned the "sharp increase" Riyadh's executions of people convicted of drug-related crimes. In 2022, the UN called on Saudi authorities to "cease the use of the death penalty in such cases."