Saudi Arabia Executed 35 Ethiopians in 2025: Rights Groups
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- Saudi Arabia executed 35 Ethiopians in 2025, up from just 2 two years earlier, with 17 of those killings in the first seven months alone and five executions on a single Monday, according to Amnesty International research.
- Death row inmates in the Khamis Mushait prison allege they were denied lawyers, court papers, and adequate translation, and were forced to sign Arabic-language documents agreeing to their sentences without understanding them.
- Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Reprieve documented "mass trials" and "mass sentences" lacking due process, with defendants left "in the dark about their fate" from initial sentencing through Supreme Court review and royal ratification.
- Ethiopian Orthodox Church Patriarch Abune Mathias called the inmates "voiceless children" living "under the shadow of death" after three Ethiopians were executed in April, sparking an outcry that prompted diplomatic engagement.
- Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos met Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Al-Khuraiji in Addis Ababa in May, and Ambassador Tafa Tulu Dadi visited the prison in June — but prisoners told the BBC they weren't given enough time to explain their situation, and executions continued the following week.
- BBC-interviewed prisoners say they were carrying khat — a legal stimulant widely used in the Horn of Africa — not hashish as Saudi official statements claim, with most recruited by employers offering extra pay for package deliveries along the Yemen border.
- Detention conditions in the overcrowded facility include 200 men crammed into a cell designed for 90 with only 45 bunk beds; prisoners report covering themselves with rubbish bags at night and facing beatings for asking guards questions.
Why it matters: Ethiopian migrants from Tigray face executions at a sharply rising pace — 35 in 2025 versus just 2 two years earlier — in trials that three major rights organizations describe as systematically violating due process. Despite diplomatic pressure from Ethiopia's foreign minister, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the African Union's human rights commission, executions have continued, with Saudi Arabia's official statements defending the process as protecting citizens "from the scourge of drugs."
