Saudi authorities have been carrying out an unprecedented surge in executions in 2025 without apparent due process, Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Democracy Center said today. The June 14 execution of Turki al-Jasser, a journalist known for exposing corruption within the Saudi royal family, raises concerns that the Saudi government is using the death penalty to crush peaceful dissent.
Saudi authorities had executed at least 241 people in 2025 as of August 5, with 22 executions in the previous week alone, according to the international human rights organization Reprieve. Reprieve reported that the number of executions in 2025 would exceed all prior records if executions continue at the same rate.
"Saudi authorities have weaponized the country's justice system to carry out a terrifying number of executions in 2025," said Joey Shea, researcher for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates at Human Rights Watch. "The surge in executions is just the latest evidence of the brutally autocratic rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman."
Rampant due process violations and systemic abuses against defendants in Saudi Arabia's courts and criminal justice system make it highly unlikely that any of those executed in 2025 received a fair trial. They include 162 people executed for nonlethal drug-related offenses, and more than half of those executed have been foreign nationals, according to Reprieve. Al-Jasser was the first journalist Saudi authorities had executed since the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. Saudi law requires the king or crown prince to approve all executions.
Al-Jasser, in his late 40s, was a prominent Saudi writer, journalist, and blogger. He wrote for Al[KA1] -Taqreer, an independent newspaper that championed democracy and human rights, which Saudi authorities shuttered in September 2015. Al-Jasser operated the popular anonymous X account "Kashkool," which regularly exposed corruption and human rights abuse linked to the Saudi royal family. The account was closed soon after al-Jasser's 2018 arrest.
On June 14, the Interior Ministry issued a statement announcing al-Jasser's execution, accusing him of various "terrorist crimes," including "destabilizing the security of society and the stability of the state." The authorities did not detail nor provide evidence for these alleged crimes.
Al-Jasser's arrest, detention, trial, and execution were shrouded in secrecy. His family visited him shortly before his execution but received no information or indication that he had been sentenced to death or that his execution was imminent, the Middle East Democracy Center reported. Al-Jasser's family has not received his body.
In March 2018, Saudi authorities raided al-Jasser's home, seized his electronic devices, and arrested him during a widespread crackdown on dissent. The authorities held al-Jasser in the country's notorious al-Hai'r prison, where he was allegedly tortured. No information is available about al-Jasser's trial: no family members or lawyers were able to attend, nor did anyone receive any court documents related to his case. It is unclear whether al-Jasser himself received any court documents related to his own case.
Saudi activists believe that al-Jasser's execution was deliberately carried out the day after Israel attacked key Iranian military and nuclear sites, when regional and international media would not be focused on events in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Jasser's execution is one of at least two recent executions in which activists suspect the death penalty was used to crush dissent.
On February 27, 2024, Saudi authorities executed Abdullah al-Shamri, a Saudi political analyst specializing in Türkiye. In a statement announcing the execution, the Interior Ministry accused al-Shamri of various terrorist crimes including "threatening the stability and endangering the security" of Saudi Arabia. Al-Shamri met regularly with journalists from prominent news outlets and had appeared as a political commentator on television.
In July 2023, the Specialized Criminal Court, Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism tribunal, convicted Muhammad al-Ghamdi, a retired Saudi teacher, of several criminal offenses related solely to his peaceful expression online and sentenced him to death, using his tweets, retweets, and YouTube activity as the evidence against him. His sentence was later commuted to 30 years in prison.
Saudi prosecutors are also seeking the death penalty against the prominent Islamic scholar Salman al-Alodah on various vague charges related to his peaceful political statements, associations, and positions, as well as religious reformist thinker Hassan Farhan al-Maliki on vague charges relating to his peaceful religious ideas.
These cases highlight that Saudi authorities are increasingly weaponizing the use of the death penalty to repress freedom of expression in the country, Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Democracy Center said.
Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Democracy Center have repeatedly criticized rampant abuses in Saudi Arabia's criminal justice system, including long periods of detention without charge or trial, denial of legal assistance, and the courts' reliance on torture-tainted confessions as the sole basis for conviction. The violations of defendants' rights are so fundamental and systemic that it is hard to reconcile Saudi Arabia's criminal justice system with a system based on the basic principles of the rule of law and international human rights standards, the groups said.
Saudi authorities executed 81 men on March 12, 2022, the country's largest mass execution in years, despite the leadership's promises to curtail the use of the death penalty. Saudi activists told Human Rights Watch that 41 of the men belonged to the country's Shia Muslim minority, who have long experienced systemic discrimination by the government. Saudi Arabia executed 47 men for terrorism offenses in January 2016. In April 2019, it executed 37 men, at least 33 of whom were Shia and had been convicted following unfair trials for various alleged crimes, including protest-related offenses, espionage, and terrorism.
International human rights standards, including the Arab Charter on Human Rights, ratified by Saudi Arabia, obligate countries that use the death penalty to only do so for the "most serious crimes" and in exceptional circumstances. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement in November 2022 on the alarming rate of executions in Saudi Arabia after it ended a 21-month unofficial moratorium on the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses.
"Behind closed doors, Saudi Arabia is executing peaceful activists and journalists following politicized trials," said Abdullah Alaoudh, senior director of countering [KA2] authoritarianism at the Middle East Democracy Center. "These state-sanctioned killings are an assault on basic human rights and dignity that the world cannot afford to ignore."
