Saudi Arabia has executed two Bahrainis accused of plotting terrorist operations, state media said on Monday, taking the number of executions this month to nine.
According to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Bahraini citizens Jaafar Sultan and Sadiq Thamer were accused of “joining a terrorist cell led by a man wanted in Bahrain”.
There was no immediate reaction from officials in Bahrain.
Nine people convicted of terrorism have been executed in Saudi Arabia since May 2, all in the eastern region, where the Shiite minority is concentrated.
Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s most prolific users of the death penalty.
More than 40 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia so far this year, according to an AFP count following state media reports.
In 2022, Saudi Arabia executed 147 individuals, including 81 on a single day, for terrorism-related crimes, an event that sparked an international outcry.
The Saudi Arabian Press Agency (SPA) said that the two Bahrainis “received training in camps belonging to terrorist organizations aimed at destabilizing the security of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.”
He was similarly convicted of aiding “terrorists” in Saudi Arabia by smuggling explosive material and with intent to carry out terrorist attacks in the kingdom and in neighboring Bahrain.
Al-Wafaq, the main Shiite opposition group in Bahrain, called the executions a “crime”.
According to Amnesty International, Sultan and Thamer were arrested in Saudi Arabia on 8 May 2015. He was sentenced to death in October 2021 after “a deeply flawed trial based on a torture-tainted confession”, the rights group said last May.
In June 2022, the United Nations Special Envoy on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions sent a letter to the Saudi authorities, urging them to “stop any possible steps towards the execution” of the two men and “ensure that Please be retried in accordance with their “International Laws and Standards”.
More than 1,000 people have been executed since King Salman took power in 2015, according to a report released earlier this year by Reprieve and the European-Saudi Human Rights Organisation.
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