Saudi Arabia executed at least 122 people for drug-related convictions in 2024, its highest known total. At the end of the year, the country was chosen to host the 2034 World Cup.
Saudi Arabia was a major contributor to a big increase in the world’s recorded executions for drugs. The kingdom has intensified a brutal drug war in response to increased substance use.
The United States ally resumed use of the death penalty for drug charges in 2022, after a claimed pause following international condemnation over the 2018 murder of Jamal Khasshogi.
Globally, at least 615 people were executed for drug-related convictions in 2024, approaching 2015’s record high of 763 people, according to a new report by Harm Reduction International (HRI). The latest figure is a 32-percent increase on 2023, when HRI documented 467 confirmed executions.
The report comes after US President Donald Trump in February renewed his backing for the death penalty for people who sell drugs, calling it “very humane” and falsely claiming that countries imposing this punishment have no issues with drug use.
“Rather than holding Saudi Arabia accountable for such extreme violations, the international community remains silent and even rewarded the kingdom with the 2034 World Cup.”
“Despite overwhelming evidence that capital punishment does not deter drug crimes, a handful of countries are escalating their use of this inhumane practice,” said Giada Girelli, senior human rights analyst at HRI.
“Rather than holding Saudi Arabia accountable for such extreme violations,” she told Filter, “the international community remains silent and even rewarded the kingdom with hosting the 2034 World Cup—sending a dangerous message to retentionist countries that executions and other abuses in the name of drug control can continue with impunity.”
In December, the UN’s human rights experts condemned the spate of executions in the oil-rich Middle Eastern state, which were long inflicted through beheading by sword in public squares, but now occur behind closed doors, with the specific means unclear. The de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, claimed in 2022 that the death penalty had been eliminated aside from murder cases, as part of his vision for a more liberal kingdom, but at least 330 people were executed in total in 2024—the highest number in decades.
“Executions of foreign nationals appear to be increasingly taking place without prior notification to death row inmates, their families, or their legal representatives,” the UN’s special rapporteur said in a statement, with three-quarters of those executed foreign nationals, including four Nigerian women. “Under international law, States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose it for the ‘most serious crimes’, involving intentional killing. Drug-related offences do not meet this threshold.”
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) said in its 2024 report, which was cited by HRI, that it had received information suggesting that some arrests were arbitrary, “with severe violations against those accused of drug use and trafficking, including appalling conditions in detention facilities, denial of basic rights to communicate with the outside world, and denial of the right to adequate self-defense, among other abuses.”
“The victims of these executions are often the most vulnerable—those who are poorest, most in need, and frequently foreign workers.”
Saudi Arabia is experiencing increased drug use—notably of captagon, the Syrian-made amphetamine—as the country’s top-down reforms disrupt society. Private rehab centers have been allowed to open for the first time. But some of the recent executions have been for the alleged smuggling of hashish, a form of cannabis which has been legalized in parts of the world, while there are serious concerns over pre-trial torture and access to fair trials.
The expansion of the scope of executions beyond heroin and cocaine trafficking, to include “individuals convicted merely for selling cannabis within the country, marks a disturbing escalation in the severity of punishment,” Taha Alhajji, the ESOHR’s legal consultant, told Filter. “The victims of these executions are often the most vulnerable—those who are poorest, most in need, and frequently foreign workers who face both torture and execution.”
In 2023, Saudi Arabian authorities executed Hussein Abo al-Kheir, a Jordanian father of eight. He was sentenced to death in 2015 for alleged drug trafficking following a trial decried by campaigners as “grossly unfair,” and which came after extended torture, with al-Kheir suspended from his feet and beaten. “He thought he would lose his life if the torture continued so he signed a document to confess,” his sister Zeinab al-Kheir told The Times.
Zaid Junaid, an Indian migrant who was working as a driver for a Saudi police officer, is currently on death row over alleged drug smuggling charges but continues to protest his innocence. “My brother has been framed,” Suhail Junaid told Indian media. “He was just doing his job as a driver. We hope the Indian government intervenes and saves his life.”
Saudi Arabia’s eye-watering investments into sports led it to be made host nation of the 2034 World Cup after the world soccer governing body FIFA controversially expedited its bidding process, leaving the country as the sole bidder for the year. Many of those executed in Saudi Arabia were from neighbouring countries such as Syria, Yemen and Pakistan. Numbers of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia will continue to swell amid stadium construction and other World Cup preparations.
Four countries—China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Singapore—were confirmed to have executed people for drugs in 2024. Almost four in five of those executions took place in Iran, after the country u-turned on its own reforms. But HRI notes it is likely that more executions were carried out secretly in China, North Korea and Vietnam.
Photograph by Defense Visual Information Distribution Service via NARA/Public Domain
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