Saudi Arabia is accelerating its use of the death penalty with alarming speed. In 2024 alone, the Kingdom carried out 345 executions, the highest number in 30 years, averaging one every 25 hours. That brutal pace has only intensified. As of mid-June 2025, 154 executions have already been confirmed, pointing toward another record-breaking year. Among those at immediate risk are two young men, Abdullah al-Derazi and Jalal al-Labbad, who were under 18 at the time of some of the charges brought against them. Both have exhausted their legal appeals. All that remains is a signature from King Salman.

Their cases are not exceptions. They are symptoms of a justice system that criminalizes dissent, targets children, and strips away the basic rights of the most vulnerable.

According to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR), Abdullah al-Derazi was arrested in 2014 at age 16. He was forcibly disappeared for months, tortured, and denied access to legal representation. Jalal al-Labbad, also a minor at the time of arrest, was detained during a 2017 raid on his home. He too was held incommunicado, tortured, and sentenced to death in a ta’zir ruling, meaning it was not based on any binding legal text and its enforcement is left entirely at the discretion of the king.

Both names were included in a 2023 communication from UN Special Rapporteurs expressing alarm over the execution of minors. The Saudi government dismissed the concerns as “inaccurate.” Yet UN experts reiterated in April 2025 that such executions constitute a flagrant violation of international law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Saudi Arabia has ratified.

In 2020, Saudi Arabia claimed it had abolished the death penalty for minors. But as ADHRB has documented, this reform remains dangerously incomplete. The royal decree excludes cases prosecuted under qisas (retribution), hudud (fixed Sharia penalties), and ta’zir, where judges have broad discretion. No binding law was ever passed to enforce the reform, and judges continue to impose death sentences on juvenile defendants by reclassifying charges.

This legal ambiguity enables the very abuses the reform promised to end. Take the case of Yousif al-Manasif, arrested at age 14, tortured, and now once again facing a death sentence after a court reinstated it in 2024. Or Abdullah al-Howaiti, convicted for a crime allegedly committed at 17, despite serious gaps in evidence and claims of forced confession. These cases, like those of al-Derazi and al-Labbad, illustrate how the Saudi justice system bends international law to justify irreversible punishment.

Even when political detainees are released, the persecution often continues in new forms. As ADHRB has reported, dozens of recently released prisoners, some of them high-profile activists, have been subjected to arbitrary travel bans, surveillance, and gag orders. Others face the threat of re-arrest or are forced to wear electronic monitoring devices.

According to a recent investigation, these restrictions are not only arbitrary but often indefinite, violating both domestic law and international standards. The case of Loujain al-Hathloul, who remains under a travel ban years after her sentence ended, shows just how deeply embedded this second layer of repression has become.

This is not a system of justice. It is a system of political control. The same institutions that torture minors and sentence them to death also impose post-release penalties to muzzle dissent. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia spends billions on international events designed to rebrand its global image. From the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Jeddah to the upcoming 2034 FIFA World Cup, the Kingdom has turned global sport into a PR machine, drawing attention away from its daily violations of human rights.

The case of Abdullah al-Derazi and Jalal al-Labbad reveals a system in which torture, repression, and execution are applied with devastating precision against children, protestors, and dissidents alike. Even release offers no escape. As Saudi Arabia polishes its global image, it does so atop a justice system built to punish rather than protect.

The international community must go beyond symbolic statements and demand real accountability. That includes an immediate moratorium on executions, legal reforms to codify the ban on child sentencing, and genuine oversight of post-release restrictions. Anything less is complicity.

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