Saudi Arabia executes man after objections from rights defenders

Saudi authorities have announced the execution of a man on terrorism charges, despite advocates’ objections that he was convicted over offenses committed as a minor.

“The death sentence was carried out against Jalal bin Hassan bin Abdul Karim Labbad, a Saudi national, in the Eastern Province,” the state news agency SPA reported.

Labbad, it said, had “committed terrorist crimes including joining a foreign terrorist organization.”

The agency added that he was convicted for killing a judge in Qatif governorate, as well as firing and launching explosives at security forces with the intent to kill them.

Labbad was among a number of people sentenced to death for offenses committed when they were under 18 years old.

In October 2023, Amnesty International said the Saudi supreme court had issued a decision in secret to uphold the death sentence for Labbad, a member of the kingdom’s Shiite minority.

He was sentenced on terrorism charges alongside eight others, including Abdullah al-Derazi, who was also a minor at the time, over their involvement in rare anti-government protests in 2011, according to Amnesty.

UN experts in May called for the release of Labbad and four others convicted over offences committed when they were minors.

Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most prolific practitioners of the death penalty, has carried out at least 250 executions so far this year.

The conservative country is on course to outstrip last year’s 338 executions — the most since public records first documented the cases in the early 1990s.