This report supplements the coauthors’ August 2024 report on death penalty issues in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi authorities have not implemented the Committee’s 2018 recommendations to “[c]onduct a study on the root causes of the overrepresentation of migrant workers in the criminal justice system with a view to addressing those causes” and “[c]onsider abolishing the death penalty.”1 Migrant workers, foreign nationals, and other minority groups are disproportionally affected by the death penalty in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia fails to uphold its obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

Saudi Arabia continues to retain the death penalty for a wide range of offenses across three categories of Islamic law: Huddud (mandatory), qisas (retributive), and ta’zir (discretionary). Within these categories, judges retain wide-ranging powers to determine what behavior may constitute a criminal offense and whether to sentence a person to death.

Saudi Arabia continues to retain the death penalty for crimes that do not meet the most serious crimes threshold, including non-lethal offenses, such as drug related offenses, sorcery, and witchcraft, among others.

When a court convicts a person for murder under qisas, the victim’s relatives may authorize the death penalty or alternatively choose to pardon the offender in exchange for diyah (blood money). The victim’s family may also pardon the offender without seeking any financial compensation, motivated solely by a desire for spiritual fulfillment (seeking reward from God).

Despite the government’s prior assurances that it would reform the judicial system and limit the use of the death penalty, authorities have intensified the rate of executions, with nearly twice as many executions in 2023 as in 2015. As of 23 October, authorities have executed 236 individuals in 2024, the highest annual numbers recorded since 1990, and the equivalent of more than one execution every two days.