The quantity dwarfed the 67 executions reported there in all of 2021 and the 27 in 2020.
Offences ranged from becoming a member of militant teams to holding “deviant beliefs”, the ministry mentioned in an announcement.
“These people, totalling 81, had been convicted of assorted crimes together with murdering harmless males, ladies and youngsters,” the assertion learn.
“Crimes dedicated by these people additionally embody pledging allegiance to overseas terrorist organisations, equivalent to ISIS (Islamic State), al-Qaeda and the Houthis,” it added.
The ministry didn’t say how the executions had been carried out.
The boys included 37 Saudi nationals who had been discovered responsible in a single case for trying to assassinate safety officers and concentrating on police stations and convoys, the assertion added.
The mass execution is prone to deliver again consideration to Saudi Arabia’s human rights file at a time when world powers have been targeted on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Rights teams have accused Saudi Arabia of imposing restrictive legal guidelines on political and non secular expression, and criticised it for utilizing the demise penalty, together with for defendants arrested once they had been minors.
“There are prisoners of conscience on Saudi demise row, and others arrested as kids or charged with non-violent crimes,” Soraya Bauwens, deputy director of anti-death penalty charity Reprieve, mentioned in an announcement.
“We concern for each one in all them following this brutal show of impunity,” she added.
Saudi Arabia denies accusations of human rights abuses and says it protects its nationwide safety by means of its legal guidelines.
The state SPA information company mentioned the accused had been supplied with the correct to an lawyer and had been assured their full rights underneath Saudi legislation through the judicial course of.
The dominion executed 63 folks in sooner or later in 1980, a yr after militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, in response to state media experiences.
A complete of 47 folks, together with outstanding Shi’ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr, had been executed in sooner or later in 2016.
