A Saudi man convicted of armed robbery and murder charges when he was a minor was sentenced to death for the second time after a first ruling was overturned, rights groups said Thursday.
Abdullah al-Howaiti was arrested in 2017 at the age of 14 on charges of armed robbery and killing a police officer in Saudi Arabia’s northern Tabuk province.
‘Abdullah al-Howaiti has now been sentenced to death not once, but twice, by a court that knows he was fourteen years old when he was arrested and tortured,’ Maya Foa, director of anti-death penalty charity Reprieve, said in a statement.
‘How can this be when Saudi Arabia has claimed, so often and so vociferously, to have eliminated the death penalty for children?’
Huwaiti had been arrested along with five others and Human Rights Watch and Reprieve have said all six defendants told court sessions that interrogators had coerced their confessions through torture or the threat of it.
A total of nearly 70 people have been executed this year in the kingdom, according to an AFP tally based on official statements. Read the full story in the Mail Online.