Saudi Arabia is on pace for another record-breaking year in its use of the death penalty. According to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), 180 people were executed in the first half of 2025 alone, more than double the number recorded during the same period in 2024. If this pace continues, 2025 will surpass even last year’s grim record of 345 executions, the highest number in Saudi Arabia in three decades.
This intensifying campaign of executions disproportionately targets foreign nationals and the most vulnerable members of society. Out of the 180 executions confirmed so far this year, 95 victims were non-Saudis. Among the most alarming cases are 15 Somali nationals, all held in Najran prison and executed in early 2025 on hashish-related charges. As ESOHR notes, this represents the highest number of foreigners executed so far this year.
Such cases highlight the stark discrimination embedded in the Saudi justice system. As documented by ECDHR, foreign defendants frequently face language barriers, lack of legal representation, and no consular access. In Tabuk prison, 28 Egyptian nationals remain at risk of execution. Ten Egyptians from the same cell block have already been executed since January, mostly for drug-related charges. Survivors report physical torture, prolonged solitary confinement, and repeated false assurances of clemency.
The Saudi government claimed in 2020 to have suspended drug-related executions, but that moratorium was quietly reversed. In 2025 alone, at least 68 people have been executed for non-lethal drug offenses. Of these, nearly 65 percent were sentenced for drug cases, 46 percent of which involved cannabis, raising serious questions about proportionality and compliance with international law. According to the UN, such crimes do not meet the threshold of “most serious offenses” required for the death penalty under international human rights standards.
The death penalty is also being used against children. As ADHRB reports, two young men, Abdullah al-Derazi and Jalal al-Labbad, are currently at imminent risk of execution. Both were minors at the time of their alleged offenses and were subjected to torture and denied fair trials. Their only remaining obstacle to execution is a signature from King Salman. These cases show that the 2020 royal decree supposedly banning the execution of minors remains dangerously incomplete and largely unenforced.
Political repression is another key driver of Saudi Arabia’s execution policy. According to ADHRB, the number of executions for political charges is also rising. Activists, dissidents, and even social media users face the death penalty under the kingdom’s broad and ambiguous anti-terrorism laws. These prosecutions often rely on confessions extracted under torture and are approved through opaque legal procedures that violate international norms of due process.
While the world focuses on Saudi Arabia’s ambitions to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup or its investments in Formula 1, these executions continue largely unnoticed. The image of reform is carefully curated, but the reality is a campaign of state violence masked by PR and enabled by international silence. Executing drug mules, child defendants, and peaceful dissidents is not justice. It is a systemic abuse of state power. If the current pace continues, 2025 will mark a new and tragic peak in Saudi Arabia’s long history of repression through capital punishment.