State media reported that Saudi Arabia executed five suspects for a deadly attack on a Shia Imambargah (house of worship), making it the country’s largest group execution of 2018.
On Monday, the Saudi Press Agency reported that five men, four Saudis and one Egyptian, were put on trial for the 2009 terrorist attack on the Imam Hussain mosque in Dammam, the capital of the eastern Saudi province of Qatif and home to most of the country’s oil and its Shia minority. The attack killed five people and injured more than ten.
According to state media, one man was decapitated while the others were killed in other ways.
Inmates Talha Hisham Muhammad Abdo, a citizen of Egypt, and Saudi nationals Ahmed bin Muhammad Asiri, Nessar bin Abdullah Al-Mousa, Hamad bin Abdullah Al-Mousa, and Abdullah bin Abdul-Rahman Al-Tuwaijri were apprehended.
Abdo, who was linked to a terrorist group, was found guilty of attempted suicide bombing and firing at security officers. Ahmed, Nessar, and Hamad, three of the Saudi inmates, were all discovered to have links to the same terrorist group.
The fifth defendant, Abdullah, was found guilty of covering up for the terrorist group and without notifying security officials of the operation.
Each of the five defendants was sentenced to death by a special court that heard their cases. The Saudi Gazette reports that the executions took place in the country’s Eastern Province.
Attack blame was placed on ISIS, a terrorist organisation. The Saudi government has not said whether or whether the executed people had any ties to ISIS.
The latest round of executions brings Saudi Arabia’s total number of executions this year to 68. Human rights organisations have frequently condemned Saudi Arabia for its excessive use of the death penalty.
Since the beginning of May, over 20 people have been executed, mostly in the eastern region, for terrorism-related charges.
More than twice as many individuals were executed in Saudi Arabia in 2018 as would be executed in 2021. The number for 2022 includes the 81 persons killed for terrorism-related acts on a single day in March of that year, which prompted an international outcry.
Two men executed in Saudi Arabia amid rising use of the death penalty.
According to a research by Reprieve and the European-Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, over a thousand death sentences have been carried out since 2015.
Saudi Arabia is seeking to soften its image by implementing significant social and economic changes as part of its “Vision 2030” reform drive, but the country has recently seen an increase in executions due to its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
