Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Saudi authorities on October 20, 2025, executed a man convicted of alleged crimes committed as a child, Human Rights Watch said today. Abdullah al-Derazi had been sentenced to death on terrorism charges related to participating in protests and funeral processions. He was the 300th person executed by Saudi authorities in 2025.
The authorities have been carrying out executions at an unprecedented rate in 2025 without apparent due process, including at least one execution of a known journalist and at least 198 for nonviolent drug-related offenses. A second person, Jalal al-Labbad, who was executed on August 21, was convicted on similar charges related to participating in protests when he was a child.
“With the execution of Abdullah al-Derazi, Saudi authorities reached two horrific milestones: 300 executions in the first 10 months of 2025 and the second execution of a person accused of committing crimes as a child,” said Joey Shea, researcher for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates at Human Rights Watch. “These executions should shatter any remaining doubts globally about Saudi Arabia’s dire human rights record.”
Al-Derazi belonged to the country’s Shia Muslim minority, who have long suffered systemic discrimination and violence by the government. Saudi police arrested him in August 2014 after beating him severely in the street, the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) reported. Saudi authorities subjected him to prolonged solitary confinement, other forms of torture including beatings and burning his face and around his eye, and forced him under torture to sign a confession, ESOHR reported.
Saudi Arabia’s notorious Specialized Criminal Court sentenced al-Derazi to death in February 2018 for protest-related offenses allegedly committed at age 17 under the country’s counterterrorism law, according to court documents. In 2023, the ESOHR and MENA Rights Group learned that the Supreme Court had issued a secret ruling upholding al-Derazi’s death sentence.
On October 20, 2025, Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry announced Al-Derazi’s execution, alleging that he had committed “terrorist crimes” and “establish[ed] a terrorist organization aimed at destabilizing security and firing on security headquarters and security personnel with the intent to kill them, in collaboration with a group from the same organization.”
On August 21, the authorities executed Jalal al-Labbad, who was 15 years old at the time of his alleged offenses. Saudi authorities arrested al-Labbad in 2017 for participating in demonstrations and funeral processions, the ESOHR reported. Al-Labbad’s family was not informed of his execution date and reportedly learned about his death through the media, United Nations human rights experts said in a news release on September 5. The UN experts called on the Saudi government to “immediately return Mr. al-Labbad’s body to his relatives and permit an independent medico-legal examination.”
The charges against both men accused of offenses committed as children were based
almost exclusively on their confessions. Human Rights Watch has documented longstanding violations of due process and fair trial rights in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system, including using forced confessions against children sentenced to death, making it unlikely that either al-Labbad or al-Derazi received a fair trial.
Saudi Arabia is a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which strictly prohibits the use of capital punishment for offenses committed by individuals under age 18. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all countries and under all circumstances as a cruel and inhumane punishment.
Riyadh Skyline. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons .
Saudi courts have sentenced at least six other children accused of offenses to death, including Yousef al-Manasif, Ali al-Mabiouq, Jawad Qureiris, Ali al-Subaiti, Hassan al-Faraj, and Mahdi al-Mohsen. These five remain in danger of execution on similar charges, despite calls by UN experts and human rights groups to halt executions for offenses allegedly committed as children.
In November 2024, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that the detentions of al-Labbad, al-Derazi, al-Manasif, Qureiris, and al-Faraj were arbitrary.
International human rights law, including the Arab Charter on Human Rights, ratified by Saudi Arabia, obligate countries that use the death penalty to only do so for the “most serious crimes” and in exceptional circumstances. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights released a statement in November 2022 about the alarming rate of executions in Saudi Arabia after it ended a 21-month unofficial moratorium on the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses.
“While the Saudi government continues its efforts to whitewash its dismal rights reputation, global celebrities in entertainment and sport offered huge sums there should consider whether they are helping to provide cover for the execution of more men accused of offenses committed as children,” Shea said.
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