Saudi Government Claims ‘Terror’ in Slew of Executions Condemned by Rights Groups
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – 37 people in Saudi Arabia were executed Tuesday on terrorism-related charges, according to the Saudi Press Agency, during which ceremony the body of a dead man was later crucified.
Despite avowals from Saudi state media that the accused were “adopting terrorist extremist ideology and forming terrorist cells,” human rights watchdog Amnesty International claimed the brutality was carried out for more nefarious purposes.
“It is…yet another gruesome indication of how the death penalty is being used as a political tool to crush dissent from within the country’s Shi’a minority,” said Lynn Maalouf, Middle East Research Director at Amnesty.
14 of the 37 men put to death Tuesday were apprehended for their participation in anti-government protests in the Eastern Province, the predominantly Shi’ite section of Saudi Arabia, while one expert has claimed, based on an analysis of the names of the condemned, that 34 of the 37 were of Shi’ite extraction.
“They didn’t have to execute these people, but it’s important for them to ride the American anti-Iranian wave,” opined Ali Al-Ahmed, Saudi analyst and head of a Washington think tank, who suspects the Saudi government has been emboldened in its quest for regional hegemony as a result of the U.S. hardening its position toward the Shi’ite Islamic Republic, and is beginning to flex its muscles toward pro-Iran dissidents.
104 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia so far in 2019.