On Monday, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed six people on drug and murder charges. Since the beginning of 2017, Saudi authorities have officially put to death 44 people. Many more may have been killed extra-judicially.
According to the country’s interior minister, five of the individuals executed Monday were Saudi nationals. The sixth individual was Pakistani.
Home to Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia boasts one of the highest execution rates in the world. With Wahhabist forms of Sharia-law forming the bedrock of the country’s penal code, the Muslim kingdom has modeled its legal system in a manner consistent with literalist interpretations of the Quran.
“The kingdom has one of the highest execution rates in the world, handing down the death penalty for terror, murder, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking crimes,” reports The Independent. “In 2014, Saudi Arabia executed a record number of 158 people. Last year, it executed 153 people, a slight decrease.”
Roughly 40% of the so-called “criminals” sentenced to death by Saudi jurists were non-violent offenders. Everything from attending a dissident political protest to public expressions of atheism are offenses that are punishable by death in the Islamic country.
Here’s a list of all the things that you could be executed for in Saudi Arabia, courtesy of Vocativ. (Note: The amount of evidence required for a judge to render somebody guilty is far lower than in the West. Many are placed in jail or sentenced to death on trumped-up or fabricated charges.)
- Sorcery or witchcraft
- Adultery
- Consensual homosexual sex with another adult
- Drug possession
- Drug distribution
- Consumption of intoxicants
- Apostasy
- Burglary
- Robbery
- Treason
- Espionage
- Rape and/or sexual assault
- Non pre-meditated murder
- Aggravated murder