Saudi Arabia has executed 213 people so far in 2024, more than it has in any other calendar year on record, as the kingdom competes for a seat at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). According to the London-based rights group Reprieve, which documents the death penalty worldwide, the largest recorded figure prior to this year was 196 in 2022, followed by 184 in 2019.
“As the world’s attention fixates on horror elsewhere in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is clearing death row with a bloodbath,” Reprieve’s deputy director, Harriet McCulloch, told MEE.
“The Kingdom smashed its own grim record for most people executed in a year in the first nine months of 2024,” she added. “With 213 executions and counting, death row prisoners are at greater risk than ever before, their families desperately awaiting news of their fate in the news.”
The executions are taking place under the government of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, the kingdom’s prime minister and de facto leader, who pledged in a 2018 interview to minimise capital punishment.
My only issue with it is that it is irreversible and the system fails too often to be trusted with it. I wouldn’t object to it if no innocent victims were executed, I believe too many people are irredeemable. But the world is imperfect, better to stay safe and only apply reversible punishments.
We know the best court in the land will fail about 4% of the time. That’s the best we can in our nightmarish surveillance state.
Bitcoin you mean irredeemable, you mean they can be released from prison and start creating value. Like we have to keep them in a box and pay for the box.
You mean we should execute them because they are a net resource loss to keep alive in the box yes ?
Did I use redeem wrong? I thought it comes from redemption. Some people cannot be rehabilitated and will always be a danger to others.
Lower than I expected but still too high for something irreversible. When the failure rate is 0% then, in my opinion, capital punishment can be justly applied. Since that would never be achieved, no state should have the power to execute. I don’t oppose it of religious or moral reasons, I don’t think it is wrong in ideal terms, but I don’t think flawed and biased people can be trusted with it.