Saudi Arabia is bidding for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council on 9 October despite presiding over a human rights crisis, including an alarming rise in the number of executions.
Just one week before the vote Saudi Arabia surpassed its own record for number of executions in a calendar year, previously 196 in 2022, making 2024 the bloodiest on record.
Several child defendants are on death row at risk of being caught up in this execution spree, reports ABC News.
“We know that at least one person has been executed since [2020] for a crime committed when he was a child,” Reprieve’s Head of Death Penalty for MENA Basyouni said. “And we know of three other people on death row now for childhood crimes.”
“It’s Mohammed bin Salman — he is running the show, he makes the decisions,” she adds. “All laws must go through him.”
“He has a very controlling hand in the death sentences that are coming down Saudi Arabia and the execution numbers that are going up. So really, all roads do lead back to him.”