On 21 August 2025, a new name was added to Saudi Arabia’s alarming and ever-growing list of executions: Jalal Labbad, a young man put to death for alleged crimes committed as a child. His supposed offense was participating as a teenager in the 2011 and 2012 Al-Qatif protests against the systemic discrimination faced by the country’s Shi’a minority. After years of flawed judicial proceedings and inhumane detention, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced Labbad to death on 1 August 2022; the ruling was secretly upheld by the Supreme Court in October 2023. Saudi Arabia has once again invoked capital punishment as a tool of repression against peaceful dissent, and this time against someone who was still a child at the time of the alleged acts. Labbad’s tragic case is emblematic of how, despite promises of reform, the Kingdom’s domestic laws and criminal justice system continue to preserve the juvenile death penalty.

In 2020, Saudi Arabia announced a Royal Decree abolishing the death penalty for minors, replacing it with a maximum sentence of ten years in juvenile detention. Yet, a thorough analysis of the law and cases like Labbad’s, evidence that the Kingdom has preserved legal loopholes that still permit the execution of minors. These loopholes rest on Saudi Arabia’s interpretation of Islamic Sharia, which divides crimes into three categories: (1) Hudud crimes, such as banditry, blasphemy, or sodomy, for which fixed punishments are prescribed in the Quran; (2) Qisas, crimes involving murder or bodily harm, where punishment follows the Quran’s principle of equal retaliation; (3) Ta’zir, covering all other offenses, with punishments left to the discretion of judges or the state. Although authorities initially assured that the Royal Decree would apply to all three categories, they later restricted it to ta’zir crimes only. Therefore, by reclassifying traditionally ta’zir offenses into hudud or qisas, judges retain wide latitude to impose death sentences on minors, undermining the supposed reform. Moreover, the decree was never codified into binding law, reinforcing its shallow nature as executions continued. In practice, the decree merely mirrors Saudi Arabia’s 2018 Juvenile Law, which already limited capital punishment for juveniles in ta’zir cases but explicitly excluded hudud and qisas, where Sharia principles of criminal responsibility took precedence.

Saudi Arabia’s fundamental flaw lies in the absence of a written penal code or official interpretation of Sharia, granting judges broad discretion to define crimes and impose punishments. This ambiguity facilitates the arbitrary reclassification of offenses and weakens protections for minors. Under the Juvenile Law, hudud and qisas cases defer to Sharia, which sets criminal responsibility at puberty but does not specify a fixed age. With no codified minimum age threshold in Saudi law, judges frequently adopt strict interpretations of puberty and Sharia to justify imposing capital punishment on minors.

Labbad’s prosecution exemplifies the profound injustices of Saudi Arabia’s legal system. In 2019, prosecutors sought the hudud penalty for hirabah, a charge that broadly encompasses unlawful warfare or insurgency but has often been manipulated to target peaceful protest. Most of the allegations against Labbad stemmed from when he was a minor, including participation in demonstrations, attending funerals of those killed by security forces, and alleged involvement in the murder of a prominent judge, despite no concrete evidence. These accusations were further framed as terrorism under Saudi Arabia’s vague counterterrorism laws, which have long been used to suppress dissent. Labbad’s case reflects a broader pattern in which children and adults alike are prosecuted as terrorists for peaceful opposition.

Labbad was ultimately sentenced to death under ta’zir, a discretionary ruling not mandated by Islamic texts. This sentence should have been refused under Saudi decrees abolishing the juvenile death penalty, underscoring the state’s willingness to circumvent its own commitments to execute minors.

Labbad’s execution is a glaring reminder of the lethal flaws in Saudi Arabia’s justice system and the emptiness of its promised reforms. He was sentenced to death for acts committed as a minor, and his so-called crime was nothing more than exercising his right to peaceful expression—a right that should never carry the penalty of death. While Saudi authorities invoke Sharia to justify such rulings, nearly every other Muslim-majority country has embraced interpretations that protect minors and enshrine safeguards against their execution. Saudi Arabia stands nearly alone in exploiting Sharia to perpetuate this cruelty.

There is no longer any excuse: the Kingdom must immediately end the execution of minors and those convicted of crimes as children, and enact genuine, binding reforms to protect their rights.

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