The Telegraph: Those Are the Minors Executed by Saudi Regime

Wednesday 27 January 2016

The Telegraph: Those Are the Minors Executed by Saudi Regime

Saudi Arabia has executed minors among the 47 men whose sentences were carried out just after the New Year, UK’s The Telegraph said.

“The Gulf kingdom triggered worldwide outrage when it executed 47 people on January 2. It was the country’s biggest mass execution for more than 30 years. The death of a leading cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, sparked protests across the Middle East.”

The Telegraph added that it was thought at the time that young men sentenced to death for crimes committed as minors had been exempted. Jeremy Corbyn, among others, had raised the cases of Sheikh Nimr’s nephew, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, and two others arrested as part of the same round-up in 2012 when they were 17 or younger.

“Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, suggested that their exemption had in part been a result of British pressure.”

The British paper quoted Reprieve, the campaign group against torture and capital punishment, as saying that one of the executed was 17 at the time of the offences of which he was accused, though he had turned 18 when he was arrested. It said Ali al-Ribh was 18 when he was arrested at school on Feb 12, 2012, but only 17 during the time of the protests of which he was accused of taking part, between February and October 2011.”

“Under Saudi law, he should have been tried in a juvenile court, where the death penalty does not apply.”

“The Saudi authorities did not inform his family of the execution and are keeping the location of his burial secret,” Reprieve said. Reprieve’s Maya Foa added: “Ali al-Ribh’s tragic case shows that the Saudi authorities are quite happy to execute juvenile protesters if they think no one is looking.”

“Ali was seized by police at his school and subsequently executed, even though he was a child when the alleged protest offences were committed.”

“It said one, the lone Chadian national among them, was just 13 when he was captured in a round-up of what the authorities said was an al-Qaeda training camp in 2003. Mustafa Abkar had lied to his parents and run away to what he thought was a Koran school in Mecca, according to a documentary aired on Al-Arabiya television channel, a Saudi-owned station.”

“The other was a Saudi national. Mishaal al-Farraj was said to have been 17 when he was arrested in 2004, having joined al-Qaeda after his father was killed in a police raid, the website said.”