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Rights Groups: Saudis Will Unfairly Execute 14 Shias, Sentences Must Be Quashed

Rights Groups: Saudis Will Unfairly Execute 14 Shias, Sentences Must Be Quashed
folder_openSaudi Arabia access_time6 years ago
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World bodies said Saudi Arabia is planning to execute 14 Shia activists following a "grossly unfair trial" over political protests, urging that sentences should be quashed.

Rights Groups: Saudis Will Unfairly Execute 14 Shias, Sentences Must Be Quashed

"The rise in death sentences against Saudi Arabian Shia is alarming and suggests that the authorities are using the death penalty to settle scores and crush dissent under the guise of combating 'terrorism' and maintaining national security," said Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson on Tuesday.

Besides, some court documents seen by Amnesty International revealed that a total of 38 defendants were detained and kept in pre-trial detention for over two years before their trial began.

They were almost always held in solitary confinement and their families were denied access to visit them.

"The sham court proceedings that led to death sentences ... brazenly flout international fair trial standards," said Amnesty's Middle East Director Lynn Maalouf.

"Death sentences based on coerced "confessions" violate international human rights law and are a repugnant yet all-too-common outcome in security-related cases in Saudi Arabia," added Maalouf.

"These death penalty trials fail to meet even the most basic requirements for due process."

"The sentences should immediately be quashed," she added.

Saudi Arabia carried out 153 executions across the kingdom last year. In the most stunning case of executions in 2016, Saudi Arabia executed on January 2 Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr along 46 other people in defiance of international calls for the release of the prominent Shia cleric and other jailed political dissidents in the kingdom.

Earlier in 2015, the kingdom carried out 158 executions, including 71 foreign nationals. This number of executions in terms of annual basis in Saudi Arabia has been unseen since 1995.

Saudi officials execute convicts by sword and then inhumanely dangle their corpses from a helicopter to make sure the public could see the result of the execution.

According to the Amnesty, Saudi Arabia has one of the highest execution rates in the world. For the reason, Human Rights Watch has on multiple occasions called on the Saudi regime to abolish its "ghastly" beheadings.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team

 

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