Saudi Arabia martyrs young man for taking part in peaceful protests
Saudi Arabia has martyred a young man on charges of participating in peaceful anti-regime protests in the Shia Muslim-majority city of Qatif in the Eastern Province.
Citing the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry on Tuesday, Lebanon’s al-Ahed news website identified the victim as Ahmed bin Saeed bin Ali al-Janabi from the village of Qudeih, located north of Qatif.
Al-Ahed, described the manner of the execution as “sudden.”
Prominent Saudi lawyer and human rights activist Taha al-Haji also said al-Janabi’s name had not been included in the list of the people who faced the threat of execution.
No death sentence, he added, had been issued against him in the court of first instance, let alone such a sentence being upheld by the regime’s appellate and supreme courts.
The campaigner, meanwhile, warned that Riyadh refused to release any information concerning the fate of many people, who had been threatened with execution, under a policy of “intimidating their families.”
Al-Haji separately said Mohammed al-Shakhouri from al-Awamiyah, another town located in the Eastern Province, had had his death sentence upheld by the regime’s judicial authorities. Shakhouri’s case was passing through its final stages at the supreme court, he added.
In 2019, Riyadh quietly beheaded 37 people, mostly Shia Muslim men from the Eastern Province, following what international human rights organizations condemned as “grossly unfair” trials in a special court that deals with terrorism.
None of the bodies was returned to the families, who were warned not to hold funerals. Two of them were pinned to a post for the public to see.
SS
