What Saudi Arabia and the United States Have in Common

Updated August 2019

Let's open this posting by looking at a press release from the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) which you can find here and here:

The execution of these Saudi nationals was ratified by royal decree granted by King Salman.  According to AP, the 37 people beheaded for terrorism crimes were mostly Shiite, the Islamic sect that is the religion of Iran as opposed to Wahhabism, a puritanical form of Sunni Islam that is practiced in Saudi Arabia.  This is the largest mass execution of Shiites in the history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and it also marked the largest number of executions in a single day since January 2, 2016 when the Kingdom executed 47 people for terrorism-related crimes.

From Reprieve, a United Kingdom-based human rights and justice organization, three of the men executed were juveniles (under the age of 18 when the alleged crimes were committed) as shown here:

"Abdulkarim al-Hawaj was charged with participating in demonstrations, incitement via social media and preparing banners with anti-state slogans. He was beaten, tortured with electricity and chained with his hands above his head until he ‘confessed’ to terrorism offences.

Mujtaba al-Sweikat was arrested at King Fahd International Airport, on his way to begin his studies at Western Michigan University. He was severely beaten all over his body, including the soles of his feet, and convicted on the basis of a confession extracted through torture.

Salman Qureish was arrested shortly after his 18th birthday, accused of crimes that took place when he was a juvenile. He was denied basic legal rights and sentenced to death in a mass trial, despite repeated interventions on his behalf by the United Nations."

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) of 1966, juveniles who are under the age of 18 at the time of the commitment of a crime are exempt from the death penalty as shown in Article 6(5):

'Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age and shall not be carried out on pregnant women."

Interestingly, Saudi Arabia has neither signed nor acceded to this international law, a rare exception to the 172 nations that have acceded to or ratified the ICCPR.  It is also interesting to note that the United States has far from a clean track record when it comes to the executions of juveniles as shown on this list:

For your information, the United States ratified the ICCPR on June 8, 1992.  The United States also declined to sign a United Nations resolution calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty with the ultimate goal of abolishing its use on December 18, 2018, in contrast to 117 nations that voted in favour of the resolution as shown here:

According to Amnesty International, the executed men were convicted after sham trials that violated international fair trial standards because they relied on confessions extracted through the use of torture.  One of the executed men was beaten to the point where he lost hearing in one ear and another was beaten while blindfolded, forced to stand in stress positions and deprived of sleep.

Here is a graphic showing the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia since 2013:

Of the 149 executions in 2018, 74 were Saudi citizens while the rest were foreign nationals, 22 percent of which were Pakistani (33 individuals).

As shown in this article, Saudi executions can be rather brutal:

Up to May 2019, according to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, 107 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia with at least 44 being foreign nationals, the majority of whom were convicted of drug related charges.  It is expected that there will be executions of additional  individuals including three Islamic scholars and opposition figures.  In 2018, Saudi Arabia executed 149 people, 124 more people than were executed in the United States over the entire year as shown here:

Let's close with this summary from the SPA press release, justifying the use of the death penalty in this case:

"As they were referred to the judiciary, following establishing accusations against them for committing such crimes, legal deeds against them were issued upholding these accusations and thus verdicts were made to execute them, through corroboration, and carrying out the punishment of waging war on Aziz Mahdi Abdullah Al Rafi Al-Amri  and  Khaled Abdulkarim Saleh Al-Tuwaijri.    

The verdicts were ratified by the pertinent court of appeals as well as the supreme court and a royal order was issued to carry out the legally approved sentences, following verifying the accusations with the culprits.

Executions have taken place, accordingly, in various regions of the Kingdom, on Tuesday April 23, 2019.

As it announces that, the Ministry of Interior reiterates that this country will not desist of deterring anyone who may think of trying to harm its security or stability as well as the nationals or the residents, either, on its territories, adding that it is resolutely and firmly continuing to seek justice through carrying out the rules of the sacred Sharia, on anyone who may crosses the set limits of Allah, it also warns against anyone whose self may rationalize to him committing such terrorist and criminal acts, that the Sharia prescribed punishments shall be imposed upon him/her."

  

As you can see, the United States and Saudi Arabia have more in common than one might think.  The use of the death penalty certainly does create interesting bedfellows, doesn't it?

Saudi Arabia: Ignoring Its Human Rights Issues

Updated October 2018

While the western media focuses on the changes that have taken place in Saudi Arabian society as control in the royal family morphs, a recent press release by Human Rights Watch shows us that "the more things change, the more they stay the same" in the world's largest oil producer.

Let's look at a bit of background on one of America's two best friends in the Middle East, a nation that was recently the beneficiary of a deal for $100 billion worth of U.S.-sourced military arms.  In January 2015, 79 year-old Prince Salman bin Adbul Aziz Al Saud acceded to the Saudi throne after the death of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.  The new leader appointed his son, 29 year-old Muhammed bin Salman (MBS) as the country's Minister of Defense; one of his first acts as Minister was to start a war in Yemen in March 2015, a conflict that has ground on with little sign of resolution for three years, unless of course you call the starvation and deaths of thousands of Yemenis "a success".  In June 2017, after being appointed Crown Prince and heir to the Saudi throne by his father,  MBS spearheaded a regional move against Qatar, a nation that he accused of sponsoring terrorism and meddling in its neighbours' affairs.  

One of his most important actions took place in 2016 when Prince Muhammed bin Salman announced a plan to bring social and economic changes to the kingdom and end its addiction to oil.  Saudi Vision 2030 was introduced as follows:

The plan for Saudi Arabia's future includes three pillars:

While the Western media focussed on the privatization program, particularly the privatization of Saudi Aramco and the fact that Saudi Arabia is seeking to diversify its sources of revenue away from oil, there are underlying issues that show that the Saudi royal family is only willing to make changes that do not threaten their way of life, particularly through the nation's religious bedrock; Wahhabism:

The Saudi royal family is only too aware that when regime change takes place in the Middle East, it often results in painful and permanent changes to existing leadership.  While he may be proposing a move toward religious moderation, the nation is still firmly entrenched in a top-down ruling model backed by its Wahhabist faith.

While Muhammad bin Salman has been lauded by the Western media for his role in modest social changes in Saudi Arabia including ending the ban on women drivers starting in June 2018, it is pretty obvious to outsiders (those who also live outside of Washington, D.C.) that the nation has a significant human rights problem that gets little press time since it doesn't fit Washington's narrative about one of its key allies in the Middle East.  In an interesting interview on 60 Minutes, MBS stated the following when asked about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia:

"Saudi Arabia believes in many of the principles of human rights. In fact, we believe in the notion of human rights, but ultimately Saudi standards are not the same as American standards. I don't want to say that we don't have shortcomings. We certainly do. But naturally, we are working to mend these shortcomings."

Now, let's go back to the beginning of this posting.  Human Rights Watch recently posted the following:

"Saudi Arabia has executed 48 people since the beginning of 2018, half of them for nonviolent drug crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. Many more people convicted of drug crimes remain on death row following convictions by Saudi Arabia’s notoriously unfair criminal justice system.

Saudi Arabia has carried out nearly 600 executions since the beginning of 2014, over 200 of them in drug cases. The vast majority of the remainder were for murder, but other offenses included rape, incest, terrorism, and “sorcery.”

In Saudi Arabia, death sentences for murder are usually based on the Islamic law principle qisas, or eye-for-an-eye retributive punishment, while judges hand down death sentences for drugs at their own discretion (the Islamic law principle ta’zir). Judges rely on a 1987 fatwa by the country’s Council of Senior Religious Scholars prescribing the death penalty for any “drug smuggler” who brings drugs into the country, as well as provisions of the 2005 Law on Combatting Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, which prescribes the death penalty for drug smuggling. The law allows for mitigated sentences in limited circumstances.

International standards, including the Arab Charter on Human Rights, ratified by Saudi Arabia, require countries that retain the death penalty to use it only for the “most serious crimes,” and in exceptional circumstances. In 2012, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions stated that where used, the death penalty should be limited to cases in which a person is intentionally killed and not used to punish drug-related offenses." (my bold)

The Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide finds the following about Saudi Arabia and the methods it uses for execution and the types of crimes that can be punished on a permanent basis:

"Beheading: Sources indicate that public beheading is probably the common method of execution in Saudi Arabia. The condemned are sedated prior to execution.

Stoning: Public stoning can be used to execute individuals who have been convicted of acts such as adultery. The condemned are sedated prior to execution.

There are reports that at least one execution in January 2009 and two in 2008 may have taken place by shooting.  Over the past few years, reported executions have been almost exclusively by beheading, despite the prevalence of media discussion of the possibility of death by stoning. There are reports that Saudis have exposed the body (with head sewn back on) of the condemned to public indignity, including crucifixion, after execution for the crime of highway robbery resulting in death."

Saudi law allows for the death penalty in the following crimes:  aggravated murder, murder, killing without intent, terrorism-related offences resulting in death, terrorism-related offences not resulting in death, rape not resulting in death, robbery not resulting in death, arson not resulting in death, burglary not resulting in death, drug trafficking not resulting in death, drug trafficking resulting in death, drug possession, adultery, apostasy, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex, treason, espionage, recidivist consumption of intoxicants, sorcery and witchcraft.  

The death penalty is mandatory for cases of murder, aggravated murder, killing without intent, terrorism-related offences that result in death, terrorism-related offences not resulting in death, rape not resulting in death, drug trafficking resulting in death, adultery, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex and treason.

As you can see from this posting, despite the assurances of the Western media and Muhammad bin Salman, it looks like Saudi Arabia's relationship with the death penalty is unlikely to change any time soon given the close link between the nation's religious life and its legal system.  It is interesting to see that, despite Saudi Arabia's obvious abuse of the most basic of human rights, Washington is able to avert its eyes when it comes to the bad behaviour of its second-best friend in the Middle East at the same time that it criticizes other nations like Syria for human rights issues.

The Death Penalty in the United States - 2015 Edition

Updated December 2016

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) is a non-profit organization that provides the public with information on the death penalty in the United States.  It releases an annual report on capital punishment which gives us a look at the latest statistics on a state-by-state and national level.  Here is a summary of the groups latest annual report.

Here is a graph which shows the number of executions in the United States on an annual basis since 1976:

The 28 executions that took place in 2015 is the lowest number of executions since 1991, well down from the peak of 98 which was seen back in 1999.  This was the first time in 24 years that fewer than 30 executions took place in the United States and the number of states (six) that executed death row inmates was the fewest number of states that performed executions in more than 25 years.

In conjunction with the actual implementation of the death penalty, here is a graph which shows the number of death sentences imposed in the United States on an annual basis since 1976:

You can quite clearly see that the number of new death sentence imposed on an annual basis has dropped significantly since the 1990s and, at 49 in 2015, has fallen by 266 since it peaked at 315 in 1996.  The level of new death sentences imposed in 2015 was the lowest level since 1974.  It was also the fifth consecutive year that the United States as a whole has imposed less than 100 new death sentences.  A total of 18 death penalty states imposed no new death penalties during 2015; Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.

Here are the states that executed death row inmates in 2015 and a comparison to the number of executions in 2014:

Texas - 13 in 2015 compared to 10 in 2014

Missouri - 6 in 2015 compared to 10 in 2014

Georgia - 5 in 2015 compared to 2 in 2014

Florida - 2 in 2015 compared to 8 in 2014

Oklahoma - 1 in 2015 compared to 3 in 2014

Virginia - 1 in 2015 compared to 0 in 2014

A total of 93 percent of all executions that took place in 2015 were concentrated in four states; Texas, Missouri, Georgia and Florida.  Sixteen percent of all new death sentences imposed in 2015 came from one county in California (Riverside) and nearly 66 percent of the new death sentences imposed in 2014 came from the same 2 percent of American counties that have accounted for more than 50 percent of all death sentences in the past.

Here is a table showing the number of death row inmates by state as of July 1, 2015:

Here is a pie chart showing the racial composition of death row inmates:

Public support for the death penalty has continued to drop in 2015.  Here is graphic showing how public opinion has changed along with the number of new death sentences and executions:

Even though 56 to 61 percent (depending on the poll) of Americans supported the death penalty in 2015, this is close to 40 year lows and is nearly 20 percentage points below the support level seen back in the 1980s and 1990s.  In fact, according to Gallup, opposition to the death penalty was at he highest levels seen since 1972 when the Supreme Court decision overturned existing death penalty statutes.   Interestingly, a report by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University found the following:

This poll was taken in Harris County, Texas, the county that has historically executed more men and women than any other county in the United States.  As you can see, only 28 percent of respondents favoured the death penalty for persons convicted of murder, down from 41 percent in the late 1990s.

According to Amnesty International, as of July 2015, 101 nations around the globe have abolished the use of the death penalty for all crimes compared to 22 nations that had carried out executions in 2014, the same number that have carried out executions over the past five years.   Here are two maps showing which nations are death penalty abolitionists and which are death penalty retentionists:

In 2015, three nations abolished the death penalty; Madagascar, Fiji and Suriname.

Again, according to Amnesty International, during 2014, at least 607 executions were carried out on a worldwide basis, excluding China where exact figures are unknown since executions are considered a state secret.  Iran announced the execution of 289 persons with an additional 454 that were not acknowledged by authorities, Saudi Arabia executed at least 90 persons and Iraq executed at least 61 persons.  With 35 executions in 2014, this put the United States in fourth place overall. 

In closing, a report by the National Research Council entitled "Deterrence and the Death Penalty" concluded that:

 "...research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates. Therefore, the committee recommends that these studies not be used to inform deliberations requiring judgments about the effect of the death penalty on homicide. Consequently, claims that research demonstrates that capital punishment decreases or increases the homicide rate by a specified amount or has no effect on the homicide rate should not influence policy judgments about capital punishment.".

The 2014 FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that the southern United States has the highest murder rate in the nation at 5.5 per 100,000 people compared to 3.3 per 100,000 for the northeast states.  The high murder rate in the south is accompanied by the highest rate of executions with over 80 percent of the national total compared to less that 1 percent for northeast states which have the lowest murder rate. While I realize that the death penalty issue is highly divisive, at the very least, I think that those statistics are trying to tell us something about the effectiveness of state-sanctioned killing.

Iran and the Death Penalty

Updated February 2016

A recent brief from Amnesty International examines how many prisoners were executed by Iran in the first half of 2015.  From this data, it appears that there has been an unprecedented increase in the nation's use of the death penalty.  To help you put these statistics into perspective, Iran's population was 77.8 million in 2014.

Let's look at some background information first.  According to Iran Human Rights, in 2014, Iran executed at least 753 people, the highest reported level of executions in more than 15 years and a 10 percent increase over 2013 as shown on this bar graph noting that only confirmed executions are included:

Here is a graphic showing the number of official and unofficial executions that took place each month during 2014:

The number of executions is low in July because it is the holy month of Ramadan.  During 2014, most of the executions took place in Fars province located in the south of the country near the Persian Gulf. 

Note that Hassan Rouhani, Iran's latest president and who is considered to be a "reformist/political moderate", took office on August 4, 2013.  It is also important to note that the IHR report distinguishes between executions that have been announced by the official Iranian media, websites of the Iranian justice system, Iranian police forces, the National Iranian Broadcasting Network, state-run news agencies and national or local newspapers.  It appears that there are a significant number of executions that have not been reported through official channels; the sources for the information about these executions comes from family members, the legal profession and other human rights NGOs.

All reported executions during 2014 were carried out by hanging and most public executions were carried out using cranes as shown on this video from the FARS News Agency:

The prisoner is executed either by having an object that they are standing on removed after the noose is put into place or they are pulled up by the crane.  In both cases, the fall is unlikely to kill the prisoner, rather, they die slowly by strangulation over a period of several minutes.  As well, at least some of the executions take place in public: during 2014, 53 executions took place in public and these are often witnessed by children.

Let's go back to Mr. Rouhani, Iran's latest President and a man who is considered to be a "moderate".  In the 18 months before he was elected, 827 prisoners were executed.  In the 18 months since he was elected, 1193 executions took place, 31 percent higher than before he took office.  As well, the number of juvenile offenders executed in 2014 is at the highest rate since 1990.

Let's close this section looking at why 753 people were executed in 2014:

For the first time in five years, the official number of executions for murder charges is almost equal to the number of executions for drug-related charges.  In the case of drug-related charges, Iran's Anti-Narcotic Law requires the death penalty on the fourth conviction for drug-related offences which include trafficking of more than 5 kilograms of opium-derived narcotics or more than 30 grams of heroin, morphine and cocaine.  The vast majority of these drugs are sourced in Afghanistan which produced a near-record crop in 2014.  Iran's anti-narcotic laws have led to the execution of 367 people during 2014, down from a high of 509 in 2011.  At least 2052 people have been executed for drug-related charges in Iran since 2010.  

Now, let's look at what has happened to the number of executions in Iran during the first half of 2015.  According to Amnesty International, 694 people have been executed between the beginning of January and the 15th of July, 2015, equivalent to three people daily.  If this rate continues, Amnesty suggests that Iran could execute more than 1000 people by the end of 2015.  There is one additional change in 2015; this year, at least four people were executed over Ramadan.

Here is a graphic from Iran Human Rights showing the number of executions in the first six months of 2015 by month and why the executions took place:

Of the executions, 464 were drug-related, 114 were for murder and 70 were for other crimes; included among the executions for drugs were 12 women. 

As in the case of Saudi Arabia, it will be interesting to see if Washington and the rest of the developed world is able to ignore possible human rights violations simply because both nations have an abundance of the greasy black stuff than keeps the wheels of the world's economy turning.  Despite the fact that international law states that the death penalty is to be used only for the most serious crimes, governments have an interesting ability to turn a blind eye when there are profits to be made, particularly when those profits involve oil.