Saudi Arabia’s authorities executed more people in 2025 than ever before in a single year in the modern era. The final figure of 356 executions officially announced by the government press agency is the highest since monitoring began.
Analysis of the year in executions shows that executions of foreign nationals for drug crimes are the key driver of the execution crisis. 240 of the 356 people executed were convicted of drug offences. Of these, 188 were foreign nationals. 98 executions were for hashish only.
Last year’s figure of 345 executions was a massive increase from the previous high of 196 in 2022. This appears to be the ‘new normal’ under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), with executions taking place on an almost daily basis, mostly for drug offences.
As Reprieve and the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR) documented in their 2023 report, in the five years prior to MBS and his father King Salman taking power in January 2015, the average number of executions per year in Saudi Arabia was just 70.8. The rate of executions has since increased fivefold.
Maya Foa, CEO of Reprieve, said: “Mohammed bin Salman has repeatedly told journalists he plans to reduce the use of capital punishment, only to preside over a five-fold increase in executions. He should be called out for his lies.
The cruelty and cynicism of this regime is staggering. It kills vulnerable migrants because elite Saudi Arabia has a drugs problem and kills teenaged protesters whenever a regional crisis draws away attention. When the Crown Prince visited the US, it paused executions for the optics, only to redouble the bloodshed on his return to the Kingdom.
International partners are playing along that this is a country governed by laws, when in fact, it is ruled by violence.”
Taha al-Hajji, Legal Director of ESOHR, said: “Saudi Arabia is moving down an increasingly dangerous path. The repeated breaking of execution records confirms what we have long observed: there is no intention to honour the promises or commitments that have been publicly made. Children, migrant workers, and people who have been denied even the most basic due process remain at severe and constant risk.
The world must understand that ignoring these violations and playing along with the whitewashing of the Kingdom’s global image amounts to complicity. Saudi Arabia’s international partners know all about this execution crisis. How much longer will they tolerate it?”
Other trends in 2025 include the resumption of executions of child defendants, five executions of women (including for “witchcraft and sorcery”) and the continued use of the death penalty to suppress freedom of expression, including the execution of journalist Turki al-Jasser. See below for details.
Notes to editors
Reprieve and ESOHR track executions in Saudi Arabia by monitoring official announcements, cross-checking them with other public sources, and where possible, with lawyers and family members. There have been at least 356 executions in 2025 – the true number may be higher.
NGO monitoring of executions in the Kingdom dates back to the 1980s. 2024 and 2025 are by far the bloodiest years in the last five decades.
On August 21, Saudi authorities executed Jalal al-Labbad, for offences connected to allegedly attending protests when he was 15 to 17 years old. He told his family and his lawyer that following his arrest in 2017, he was electrocuted, beaten with implements until he passed out, kicked and stamped on with heavy boots and deprived of sleep. His execution was condemned by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Jalal’s brother, Fadel al-Labbad was executed in 2019. A third brother, Mohammed Hassan al-Labbad, is on death row, at risk of execution for protest-related offences.
On October 20, authorities executed Abdullah al-Derazi, another young man from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province accused of taking part in protests when he was a child. Prison officers burned him around his eye, broke his tooth, hung him from the ceiling, left him with permanent hearing damage and beat him so badly he was in a coma for two weeks. His ‘confession’ to terrorism offences was used to convict and sentence him to death.
Several child defendants remain at imminent risk of execution, including Youssef al-Manasif, who was sentenced to death for a second time in 2025, after his original death sentence was overturned by Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court in 2024. He, too, was convicted of protest-related offences that date back to when he was 16 and 17 years old.
In December 2024, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) issued an opinion about five child defendants in Saudi Arabia facing execution for protest-related offences: Abdullah al-Derazi, Jalal al-Labbad, Youssef al-Manasif, Jawad Qureiris and Hassan al-Faraj.
On June 14, the regime executed Turki al-Jasser, a journalist who founded the news blog Al-Mashhad Al-Saudi and ran a satirical Twitter account that sometimes made fun of the royal family. This came seven years after the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, on the orders of MBS, according to United Nations and CIA assessments.
Others at risk of the death penalty for freedom of expression include Hassan al-Maliki, a religious scholar facing capital charges for owning the wrong books and allegedly speaking to “foreign newspapers,” and cleric Salman Alodah, who is accused of “expressing cynicism and sarcasm about the government’s achievements” and “describing the Kingdom’s authorities as tyrannical,” among other charges.
Five women have been executed so far this year. Since Saudi Arabia resumed executing women for drug-related offences in 2019, the practice has continued, with growing concerns that some of the women executed may have been victims of trafficking.
