Saudi Arabia hanged five individuals, four Saudis and one Egyptian, accused of assaulting a house of worship, according to officials.
According to an AFP count, this takes the total number of executions in the kingdom since the beginning of the year to 68, making it one of the countries with the most death sentences in the world.
The five were condemned for carrying out an assault that killed five people and injured numerous others in the kingdom’s east, according to a statement from the Saudi Interior Ministry, which did not identify the date or the location. They were also determined to be members of a “terrorist organisation.”
Since the beginning of May, more than twenty people have been executed for terrorism , most of them in the east of the country, a region with a Shiite majority, according to an AFP count.
Last year, Saudi Arabia executed 147 people, 81 of them on the same day, sparking international outcry.
More than 1,000 killings have taken place since King Salman came to power in 2015 and the ascension of his son Mohammed as de facto ruler of the kingdom, according to a report by the British organization Reprieve and the Euro Organization. -Saudi Commission for Human Rights, published at the beginning of the year.
