Saudi Arabia has on Saturday, April 9 executed three soldiers for “high treason”, the country’s defence ministry said.
In a statement on Saturday, the kingdom’s defence ministry said the three soldiers were sentenced to death by a specialist court after a fair trial.
The soldiers were found guilty of “the crime of high treason in cooperation with the enemy” in a way that threatens the kingdom and its military interests, the ministry said in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency.
The statement named the three soldiers — Mohammed bin Ahmed, Shaher bin Issa and Hamoud bin Ibrahim — without identifying who they were accused of colluding with.
According to a Reuters report, the ministry did not name the alleged “enemy“, but the executions were carried out in the southern province bordering Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has been at war for more than six years against the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.
The announcement comes as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 35-year-old heir to the throne, consolidates his grip on power and as a Saudi-led military campaign intensifies in neighbouring Yemen.
Prince Mohammed is already viewed as the country’s de facto ruler, controlling all the major levers of government, from defence to the economy.
He holds the title of defence minister, while his younger brother Prince Khalid bin Salman is the deputy.
Over the past three years, the crown prince has mounted a sweeping crackdown on critics and rivals, with the imprisonment of prominent royal family members, business tycoons, clerics and activists.
In March last year, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a brother of King Salman, and the monarch’s nephew Prince Mohammed bin Nayef were detained, multiple sources said, as the crown prince sought to stamp out traces of internal dissent.
The country has come under increasing global scrutiny over its human rights record since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year at the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate.
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Saudi Arabia had also attracted global scrutiny since the detention of women’s rights activists.
Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have called on Riyadh to stop using the death penalty, citing allegations of torture and unfair trials. Saudi Arabia denied the accusations.
According to Human Rights Commission, Saudi Arabia has executed 27 people in 2020, the lowest in years, down from a record high of 185 the year before.
Via AFP.
