UN experts call on Saudi Arabia to revoke death sentence against a juvenile 'offender'

A group of UN-appointed human rights experts has called on Saudi authorities to immediately release a young man, who is on death row for crimes he allegedly committed as a minor and whose conviction followed a grossly unfair trial.

“We are alarmed by the confirmation of the death sentence against [Abdullah] al-Huwaiti on March 2, 2022, without initiating any investigation into the allegations of torture or determining the veracity of the coerced confession of guilt,” the experts said in a statement on Tuesday.

“We would like to remind the Saudi authorities of their obligation to conduct a prompt and impartial investigation wherever there are reasonable grounds to believe that torture has been committed, and to exclude any evidence obtained through torture and coercion from judicial proceedings,” they said.

Huwaiti was arrested in May 2017, when he was only 14 years old, over accusations of robbery and murder. Despite having an alibi, he was convicted based on confessions extracted under torture and other ill-treatment.

The teenager was recently sentenced to death for a second time after his original conviction was overturned by the Saudi Supreme Court in November last year, which caused anger and outrage.

He was held incommunicado for four months after his arrest and denied access to a lawyer as well as the right to a free trial. 

80% of minors on death row in Saudi Arabia still face execution: Rights group

Anti-death penalty group Reprieve says 80% of minors sentenced to death for crimes in Saudi Arabia still face execution despite the kingdom’s announcement to have scarped death penalty for child offenders.

The UN experts underscored that the imposition of the death penalty on children is absolutely prohibited under international law.

“We urge the Saudi government to adopt without delay the necessary legislative measures to abolish the imposition of the death penalty for children for all crimes,” the experts said.

“Prolonged incommunicado detention can facilitate the perpetration of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and can in itself constitute a form of such treatment," the statement added.

More than 40 teenagers face the death penalty

The KSA is infamous for it’s over eager use of capital punishment, public executions, often involving beheading and crucifixion regardless of age.

"The criminal court in Tabuk sentenced the minor Abdullah al-Huwaiti in retribution," his mother Um Abdullah posted on Twitter after Wednesday's ruling.

"After the Supreme Court overturned the first ruling because of false confessions, today it pronounces an unjust conviction just like last time."

According to the rights group Reprieve, Huwaiti was interrogated under torture, including being whipped with electrical wire and was beaten to the point that he could not walk for days.

"Abdullah al-Huwaiti has now been sentenced to death not once, but twice, by a court that knows he was 14 years old when he was arrested and tortured," Maya Foa, director of Reprieve, said in a statement.

"How can this be when Saudi Arabia has claimed, so often and so vociferously, to have eliminated the death penalty for children?"

The other defendants in the case reportedly received 15 years in prison and 1000 lashes each for the crime. 

UK minister visits Saudi on same day regime executes Shia youth

The British trade minister meets with the GCC head in Saudi Arabia on the same day the kingdom executes a Shia youth despite worldwide appeals for a reprieve.

Back in 2020, Saudi Arabia’s state-backed Human Rights Commission (HRC), citing a royal decree by King Salman, said in a statement that the country will no longer impose the death sentence on individuals who committed crimes while they were still minors.

The so-called Saudi Human Rights Commission, however, later clarified that the decree to revoke death sentences for minors does not apply to all types of crimes, and the ban only applies to a lesser category of offense under a Sharia law known as “ta’zeer.”

This means Saudi judges can therefore still sentence child offenders to death under the other two major types of punishments: “hudud” or harsher punishment for serious crimes that carry a prescribed punishment like terrorism, and “qisas”, or retribution, usually for murder.

Last March, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) said Saudi officials had executed a dozen minors under the seven-year reign of King Salman.

The human rights organization stated that five people are currently at risk of execution in Saudi Arabia.

The Arab kingdom has come intense scrutiny from global human rights watchdogs over its horrendous human rights record, especially since the brutal killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in October 2018.

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