During the first semester of 2015, Saudi Arabia has double the number of executions compared with those ocurred throughout last year.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has denounced these incidents as long as 47 of the victims have been executed because of smuggling crimes or drug trafficking without making any violence. Moreover, they complained about the lack of access to fair trials when making these executions.

More than a half of the people executed were Saudis but the rest came mainly from Pakistan, who were condemned to death for drug trade.

All over the world and in the Middle East, behind Iran, Saudi Arabia has the highest executions rate where drug trafficking, murder, rape, apostasy, adultery, armed robbery or kidnapping are punishable by death penalty.

Apart from that, in this country there are some crimes that are under capital punishment which are not included in the list of “serious crimes” established by the IHL (International Humanitarian Law), so then, the country goes against the IHL.

 

Patricia Fernández Ruiz.