Saudi authorities put two people to death on Monday to reach 17 executions in three days, state media said, as the conservative kingdom accelerated toward a record number of executions this year.
Two Saudis were executed for “terrorist crimes,” the official Saudi Press Agency said, after 15 people, mostly foreigners, were put to death for drug offenses on Saturday and Sunday.
It is the quickest pace of capital punishment since March 2022, when 81 people were executed in a single day for terrorism-related offenses, sparking widespread condemnation. In 2016, Saudi Arabia executed 47 people in what had been the country’s largest mass execution since 1980.
Thirteen of those put to death on Saturday and Sunday were convicted of smuggling hashish, and another for smuggling cocaine.
Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most prolific users of the death penalty, has carried out 239 executions so far this year. The conservative country is on course to outstrip last year’s 338 — the highest since public records first documented cases in the early 1990s.
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