Beheadings reach 20-year high in Saudi Arabia

Activists stage mock executions

outside Saudi Arabia's embassy in
Beirut, Lebanon, on April 1, 2010,
after a Lebanese man was allegedly
beheaded in Saudi Arabia for
performing witchcraft. Photo: AP
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi
Arabia carried out at least 157
executions in 2015, with beheadings
reaching their highest level in the
kingdom in two decades, according
to several advocacy groups that
monitor the death penalty worldwide.
Coinciding with the rise in executions
is the number of people executed for
non-lethal offenses that judges have
wide discretion to rule on,
particularly for drug-related crimes.
Rights group Amnesty International
said in November that at least 63
people had been executed since the
start of the year for drug-related
offenses. That figure made for at
least 40 percent of the total number
of executions in 2015, compared to
less than 4 percent for drug-related
executions in 2010. Amnesty said
Saudi Arabia had exceeded its
highest level of executions since
1995, when 192 executions were
recorded.
But while most crimes, such as
premeditated murder, may carry fixed
punishments under Saudi Arabia’s
interpretation of Islamic law, or
Shariah, drug-related offenses are
considered “ta’zir,” meaning neither
the crime nor the punishment is
defined in Islam.
Discretionary judgments for “ta’zir”
crimes have led to arbitrary rulings
with contentious outcomes.
In a lengthy report issued in August,
Amnesty International noted the case
of Lafi al-Shammari, a Saudi national
with no previous criminal record who
was executed in mid-2015 for drug
trafficking. The person arrested with
him and charged with the same
offenses received a 10-year prison
sentence, despite having prior
arrests related to drug trafficking.
Human Rights Watch found that of
the first 100 prisoners executed in
2015, 56 of the rulings had been
based on judicial discretion and not
for crimes for which Islamic law
mandates a specific death penalty
punishment.
A Syrian boy holds up a photo on
April 21, 2008, at a rally in
Damascus, Syria, after two Syrians
were beheaded in Saudi Arabia for
human trafficking.

Shariah scholars hold vastly different

views on the application of the death

penalty, particularly for cases of

“ta’zir.”

Delphine Lourtau, research director at

Cornell Law School’s Death Penalty

Worldwide, adds that there are

Shariah law experts “whose views are

that procedural safeguards

surrounding capital punishment are

so stringent that they make death

penalty almost virtually impossible.”

She says in Saudi Arabia, defendants

are not provided defense lawyers and

in numerous cases of South Asians

arrested for drug trafficking, they are

not provided translators in court

hearings. She said there are also

questions “over the degree of

influence the executive has on trial

outcomes” when it comes to cases

where Shiite activists are sentenced

to death.

Emory Law professor and Shariah

scholar Abdullahi An-Naim said

because there is an “inherent

infallibility in court systems,” no

judicial system can claim to enforce

an immutable, infallible form of

Shariah.

“There is a gap between what Islam

is and what Islam is as understood

by human beings,” he said. “Shariah

was never intended to be coercively

applied by the state.”

Similar to how the US Constitution is

seen as a living document with

interpretations that have expanded

over the years, more so is the Quran,

which serves as a cornerstone of

Shariah, he said. The other half to

Shariah is the judgments carried out

by the Prophet Muhammad. Virtually

anything else becomes an

interpretation of Shariah and not

Shariah itself, An-Naim said.

Of Islam’s four major schools of

thought, the underpinning of Saudi

Arabia’s legal system is based on

the most conservative Hanbali

branch and an ideology widely known

as Wahhabism.

A 2005 royal decree issued in Saudi

Arabia to combat narcotics further

codified the right of judges to issue

execution sentences “as a

discretionary penalty” against any

person found guilty of smuggling,

receiving or manufacturing drugs.

HRW’s Middle East researcher Adam

Coolge says Saudi Arabia executed

158 people in total in 2015

compared to 90 the year before.

Catherine Higham, a caseworker for

Reprieve, which works against the

death penalty worldwide, says her

organization documented 157

executions in the kingdom. Saudi

Arabia does not release annual

tallies, though it does announce

individual executions in state media

throughout the year.

Saudi law allows for execution in

cases of murder, drug offenses and

rape. Though seldom carried out, the

death penalty also applies to

adultery, apostasy and witchcraft.

In defense of how Saudi Arabia

applies Shariah, the kingdom’s

representative to the UN Human

Rights Council, Bandar al-Aiban, said

in an address in Geneva in March

that capital punishment applies “only

(to) those who commit heinous

crimes that threaten security.”

Because Saudi Arabia carries out

most executions through beheading

and sometimes in public, it has been

compared to the extremist Islamic

State group, which also carries out

public beheadings and claims to be

implementing Shariah.

Saudi Arabia strongly rejects this. In

December, Foreign Minister Adel al-

Jubeir told reporters in Paris “it’s

easy to say Wahhabism equals

Daesh equals terrorism, which is not

true.” Daesh is the Arabic acronym

for the IS group.

Unlike the extrajudicial beheadings IS

carries out against hostages and

others, the kingdom says its judiciary

process requires at least 13 judges

at three levels of court to rule in

favor of a death sentence before it is

carried out. Saudi officials also argue

executions are aimed at combating

crime.

Even with the kingdom’s record level

of executions in 2015, Amnesty

International says China, where

information about the death penalty

is a “state secret,” is believed to

execute more individuals than the

rest of the world’s figures combined.

Reprieve says that in Iran, more than

1,000 people were executed in 2015.

Another organization called Iran

Human Rights, which is based in

Oslo, Norway, and closely follows

executions, said at least 648 people

had been executed in the first six

months of 2015 in the Islamic

Republic, with more than two-thirds

for drug offenses.

Reprieve says Pakistan has executed

at least 315 people in 2015, after the

country lifted a moratorium on

executions early last year following a

December 2014 Taliban attack on a

school that killed 150 people, most

of them children. Only a fraction of

those executed since then have been

people convicted of a terrorist attack.