Saudi executes 37 men convicted of ‘terrorism’

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday executed 37 people convicted of terrorism.

The men, most of whom were Shiites, were executed in Riyadh, the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the predominantly Sunni province of Qassim, and in the Eastern Province, home to the kingdom’s Shiite minority.

The executions come three years after another mass execution that ultimately led to a break in relations with majority-Shiite Iran.

The men, all Saudi citizens, were executed “for adopting terrorist and extremist thinking and for forming terrorist cells to corrupt and destabilize security,” said the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

It said one person was crucified after his execution, a punishment reserved for particularly serious crimes.

At least 100 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia since the start of the year, according to data released by SPA.

On Sunday, four men were killed in an attack on a security services base north of the capital Riyadh in an assault claimed by ISIS.

Saudi authorities arrested 13 “terrorist” suspects the next day, but they did not say where the arrests took place or if they were linked to Sunday’s attack.

The Interior Ministry said some of those executed Tuesday were accused of “inciting sectarian strife,” a charge often used in the kingdom against Shiite activists.

In a statement, human rights group Amnesty International said most of those executed were Shiite men “convicted after sham trials that violated international fair trial standards [and] which relied on confessions extracted through torture.”

The executions were “yet another gruesome indication of how the death penalty is being used as a political tool to crush dissent” from within the country’s Shiite minority, said Lynn Maalouf, Middle East research director at Amnesty.

The rights watchdog said 11 of those executed were convicted of spying for Iran, while at least 14 others were sentenced in connection with anti-government protests in the Eastern Province between 2011 and 2012.

Among those executed was Abdulkareem al-Hawaj, who was only 16 at the time of his arrest, it said.

The Eastern Province has seen periods of unrest since 2011 when protesters emboldened by the Arab Spring took to the streets demanding an end to alleged discrimination by the Sunni-dominated government.

– with reporting by AFP