Saudi Arabia has executed 37 men convicted of terror-related crimes, the kingdom’s official news agency said Tuesday.
One of the convicts was crucified, according to an interior ministry statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
In Saudi Arabia, crucifixion means the body of someone executed is strung up and put on display as a deterrent to others.
“The death penalty was implemented on a number of criminals for adopting extremist terrorist ideologies and forming terrorist cells to corrupt and disrupt security as well as spreading chaos and provoking sectarian strife,” SPA said in a tweet. The statement added that some of those executed were charged with killing security officials with explosives.
The statement listed the names of the 37 Saudi nationals who were executed in various parts of the country.
The majority of those executed were Shia men, according to Amnesty International, which dismissed the legal proceedings that led to the convictions as “sham trials that violated international fair trial standards which relied on confessions extracted through torture.”
The kingdom has repeatedly denied allegations of torture.
Those executed include 11 men convicted of spying for Iran, and at least 14 others who were convicted of violent offenses related to participation in anti-government demonstrations in the country’s restive Eastern Province between 2011 and 2012, according to Amnesty.
One of the men listed in Tuesday’s government statement was Abdulkareem al-Hawaj, who, according to Amnesty, was arrested at the age of 16 and convicted of offenses related to his involvement in anti-government protests.
