'Cruel torture': Drug convicts await execution in Saudi

Their abrupt killing this month extended a recent spree of drug-related executions in Saudi Arabia, after officials ended a moratorium on the death penalty for such crimes less than two years ago.

The cases have spurred outcry from human rights groups and spread fear in Tabuk prison, near the Jordanian border, where inmates told AFP more than 50 defendants have been sentenced to die over drug smuggling and worry their executions could come at any moment.

"We don't know whose turn it is. Maybe it's me or my closest friend," said Mohammed, a 40-year-old Egyptian who ran a hotel in Riyadh before his arrest in 2015 for receiving a shipment of furniture that turned out to be stuffed with drugs.

"We are not notified in advance to say goodbye to our loved ones or even prepare ourselves psychologically," Mohammed, in tears, told AFP by phone from the Tabuk facility.

He agreed to be identified by his first name only to avoid repercussions.

Since May, Saudi Arabia has executed 28 people on drug-related charges, according to an AFP tally based on official statements, up from just two in all of 2023.

This year's toll includes the two Egyptians killed last week in Tabuk: Walid Farouk and Youssef Kleib, who the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said were guilty of smuggling hashish and amphetamines.

All told, Saudi Arabia executed at least 170 people last year, more than any other country besides China and Iran. It is on course to exceed that figure this year.

The authorities deem the executions to be compatible with Sharia law -- the Islamic legal code based on the teachings of the Koran -- and necessary to "maintain public order".

Though state media reports do not specify how executions are carried out, Saudi Arabia is notorious for beheadings, contributing to its forbidding reputation.

- Short-lived moratorium -

As de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tries to transform Saudi Arabia into a business and entertainment hub, he has hinted at a softening of its approach to capital punishment.

In a transcript of an interview with The Atlantic magazine published by state media in March 2022, Prince Mohammed said the kingdom had "got rid of" the death penalty except for cases of murder or when someone "threatens the lives of many people".

However, in November 2022 the authorities announced the first executions for drug crimes in nearly three years, trampling on a moratorium announced by the kingdom's official human rights commission.

"We were relieved and very happy when we heard about the moratorium on executions in drug cases. I felt that life had given me a second chance," said Mohammed, the Egyptian inmate in Tabuk.

Now that the executions have resumed, those hopes have been dashed, he said.

State media reported 19 drug-related executions in late 2022 before the pace slowed considerably, only to pick up again this past July.

- 'Execute me now' -

Saudi Arabia is a major market for the addictive amphetamine captagon, which floods in from Lebanon and war-torn Syria, prompting the authorities to launch a high-profile crackdown last year involving a flurry of raids and arrests.

Duaa Dhainy, a researcher for the Berlin-based European-Saudi Organisation for Human Rights (ESOHR), sees a link between that operation and the latest executions.

"We believe the campaign made prisons more crowded, and it seems that the recent executions are an attempt to close some pending cases," she said.

The Saudi government did not respond to AFP's request for comment.

Human rights groups like ESOHR, Amnesty and Reprieve say executions are all the more unacceptable because of problems with Saudi Arabia's justice system.

These "general flaws" include defendants' "exposure to torture and ill-treatment and their lack of the right to adequate self-defence," Dhainy said.

That rings true for one 34-year-old Egyptian death row inmate who, fearing retribution from prison authorities, asked to be identified only as Shadi, a pseudonym.

A taxi driver in the coastal city of Jeddah, Shadi was arrested in 2018 and sentenced to death the following year for drug trafficking, which he denies.

"I was wronged, I never got a fair trial and I didn't have a lawyer to defend me," said Shadi, who has a 10-year-old son back in Egypt.

As the executions tick up, Shadi told AFP he found the years spent behind bars awaiting his own death to be unbearable.

"Waiting for the death sentence is cruel torture," he said.

"If you are going to execute me eventually, execute me now."