Startling surge in drug-related executions of foreign nationals

Between January and April, Saudi authorities executed at least 88 people including 52 for drug-related crimes

‘There is no time left to save them, time is running out’ - deeply distressed family member

‘Saudi Arabia’s authorities must immediately stop this execution spree’ - Kristine Beckerle

Dozens of men on death row in Saudi Arabia for drug-related crimes are terrified for their lives amid a dramatic surge in executions for drug offences in the country over recent months, Amnesty International said today, based on information from family members of detainees on death row.

Between January and April, the Saudi Arabian authorities executed at least 88 people including 52 for drug-related crimes. This is a dramatic increase from 2024, which saw a record number of executions of a total of 46 people executed during the same period, none of them for drug-related crimes. Just this week, in one day on 22 April, the Saudi Press Agency announced the execution of three people, two Saudi nationals for “promoting hashish” and one Pakistani national for “trafficking heroin”. 

Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said:

“Despite Saudi Arabia's repeated claims that it is limiting its use of the death penalty for crimes not mandated under sharia, the alarming surge in executions for drug-related offences exposes the stark reality: Saudi Arabia is blatantly disregarding international law and standards, which restrict the use of the death penalty to only ‘the most serious crimes’ involving intentional killing.

“Saudi Arabia’s authorities must immediately stop this execution spree, establish an official moratorium on all executions, and move towards abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.”

Saudi Arabia must urgently revise its laws to eliminate provisions that allow for the death penalty to be imposed and ensure that any penal code adopted abolishes the death penalty, including for crimes that do not meet the threshold of ‘most serious crimes’ under international standards, such as drug-related offences, and ensure that all individuals have access to fair trials and adequate legal representation.

While Saudi authorities do not publish or share figures of individuals on death row, arrests for drug-related offences are routinely reported in state-aligned media, indicating that a large number of people are in detention and on death row for such offences.

In November 2024, prison authorities in Tabuk transferred 35 Egyptian nationals convicted of drug-related offences to a single ward, a move widely feared to signal their impending executions. Since November 2024, at least 10 foreign nationals and two Saudi nationals have been executed for drug-related offences in the same prison, raising fears of the imminent executions of the remaining men.

In addition, as of March this year, at least 44 Somali nationals, all men, are on death row in Najran Prison, southwestern Saudi Arabia, for drug-related crimes, according to the Somali Consulate in Saudi Arabia. On 16 February, the Saudi Ministry of Interior announced an execution in Najran of Mohamed Nur Hussein, a Somali national, for “smuggling hashish”, also raising fears for the fate of dozens of others on death row.

One Egyptian man on death row told his family this month:

“A few days ago, a Sudanese man was taken in the middle of the night, as we were sleeping.”

Another deeply distressed family member told Amnesty:

“There is no time left to save them, time is running out.”

Following a pause, between 20 February to 6 April, a few weeks before and during Ramadan, executions resumed with alarming speed in April and have included a startling surge in drug-related executions of foreign nationals. Between 6 and 24 April, Saudi Arabia executed 22 people, more than an average of one a day. Of these, 17 were foreign nationals from eight Arab, sub-Saharan African and Asian, including South Asian, countries, all convicted of drug-related crimes. Three Saudi nationals were also executed for drug-related offences, while three other Saudi nationals were put to death for murder and terrorism-related charges.

Grossly unfair trials

Amnesty has documented a pattern of serious fair trial violations preceding executions, including of foreign nationals in Saudi Arabia.

At least five Egyptian men currently held on death row were unable to afford legal representation due to financial constraints and were not provided with a court-appointed lawyer during investigation nor trial.

In another case, also of an Egyptian national currently on death row, the individual had a court-appointed lawyer, but the lawyer failed to share crucial case information during the trial to support his defence.

Several of the Egyptian nationals currently at risk of execution told their families and their judge that they were tortured during their interrogations to extract “confessions”. None of these torture complaints were investigated, according to court documents reviewed by Amnesty and the torture-tainted “confessions” used as evidence against them.

Issam Shazly, an Egyptian national convicted and sentenced to death under Article 37 of the Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Control Law in 2022, had no legal representation during his arrest and investigation. His family told Amnesty that the court later appointed a legal representative to support his defence, but the lawyer was uncooperative and failed to inform them about crucial details including the possibility of clemency, the deadline to appeal or when to expect the Supreme Court ruling.

His family said:

“We knew absolutely nothing because it's a foreign country and we don't know its laws. We expected the lawyer to inform us.”

A Saudi court convicted Rami al-Najjar in 2019 of bringing controlled drugs into Saudi Arabia to sell and eight grams of hashish for personal consumption, according to court documents analysed by Amnesty. He did not receive the support of an appointed lawyer. He told Amnesty that during his appeal session, the judge said that he could not argue against his conviction “because you don’t have a lawyer.” He submitted an appeal himself to the Supreme Judicial Council but received no response. Rami’s family were finally able to appoint a lawyer in early 2025, but they said that, as of March, the lawyer had not taken any action because he was waiting for updates in the case. They said:

“I don’t understand what updates other than Rami’s imminent execution there need to be for the lawyer to re-open the case”.

Mohamed Ahmed Saad and Omar Ahmad Ibrahim were arrested in May 2017 and accused of trafficking the synthetic drug Captagon. They were detained incommunicado for a year and a half after arrest. They have been on death row for almost eight years. Both men were denied access to legal representation and, according to court documents, “confessed” to the charge after being subjected to severe beatings. On 9 October 2019, the Court of Appeal upheld their death sentence.

Sharp rise in executions

Saudi Arabia has consistently had one of the world’s highest number of recorded executions. In 2024, 122 people were executed for drug-related crimes, a significant proportion of the total 345 executions known to have been carried out that year. This sharp rise occurred after a nearly three-year hiatus in such executions, following a moratorium announced by the Saudi Human Rights Commission in January 2021. Last year, Saudi Arabia was one of four countries known to have carried out executions for drug-related offences.

Amnesty opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature or circumstances of the crime; guilt, innocence or characteristics of the individual; or the method used by the state to carry out the execution.