Under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, executions in Saudi Arabia reached record-high numbers, including hundreds of people executed for drug-related offenses.
Between January 2014 and June 2025, Amnesty International monitored, collated and analyzed official information on 1,816 executions. Of the 1,816 people, 597 were executed for drug-related offenses. Nearly 75% of those were foreign nationals.
To better understand the experience of foreign nationals on death row in Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International, in collaboration with the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights and Justice Project Pakistan, examined the cases of 25 foreign nationals from Egypt, Ethiopia, Jorda, Pakistan and Somalia currently on death row or recently executed for drug-related offenses. All these foreign nationals were sentenced to death after grossly unfair trials.
The authorities have also continued to wield the death penalty against the country’s Shia minority, including for political dissent. The Shia minority accounted for 42% of executions for “terrorism” related offenses in the past decade.
Amnesty International calls on the Saudi authorities to establish a moratorium on executions, with a view to abolishing the death penalty for all crimes.