A Jordanian man has been executed in Saudi Arabia for drug trafficking, according to state media, with human rights activists claiming his confession was extracted under torture.
According to the official SPA news agency, Hussein Abo al-Kheir, a 50-year-old Jordanian driver, was executed on Sunday in the Tabouk region (north-west).
He was arrested and charged with “trafficking in amphetamine pills,” she added.
His execution demonstrates “the will of the Kingdom’s government to fight drugs in all their forms because of the grave harm they cause to individuals and society,” according to the same source.
In December, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention described Mr Kheir’s detention as “arbitrary” and ruled that there was no “legal basis” for it.
Hussein Abo al-Kheir was tortured for 12 days before signing a document admitting to drug trafficking without being able to contact a lawyer, UK-based NGO Reprieve and his sister Zeinab said in November .
According to the latter, he was arrested in 2014 when he was hired as a driver by a family living in Tabouk.
AFP could not verify these claims and the Saudi authorities could not be reached immediately.
Eleven people have been executed in this ultra-conservative kingdom in the past two weeks.
In 2022, 147 convicts suffered the death penalty – more than double the number in 2021 – some of them for drug-related offenses, while a moratorium on the latter had lasted nearly three years.
The execution of Abo al-Kheir comes exactly one year after the day-long execution of 81 people convicted of terrorist crimes. This mass execution unleashed a wave of international outrage.