A 26-year-old man has been put to death in Saudi Arabia for taking part in anti-government protests as a teenager.
Mustafa al-Darwish was executed on Tuesday following the discovery of an “offensive” photograph that showed him in attendance at Arab Springs riots when he was 17.
He was executed despite promises from the desert kingdom that the death penalty would no longer apply for offences committed when defendants were children.
As a 17-year-old, he had been caught up in Arab Spring protests among the country’s Shi’ite minority which swept through Eastern Province region in 2011 and 2012.
At the time, small numbers of demonstrators called for reform which prompted the government to pay additional benefits worth around £112 billion to citizens.
Three years later, in 2015, he was arrested and accused of a range of offences such as ‘seeking to disrupt national cohesion through participation in more than 10 riots’.
The then 20-year-old was released without charge, his family said, but police confiscated his phone and found a photograph which offended them.
Mustafa was placed in solitary confinement and his family said he lost consciousness several times during brutal interrogation sessions.
He later said he confessed to the crimes under torture and recanted them in court saying he had only admitted to the offences to make the beatings stop.
Following his conviction he spent six years on Death Row before being executed on Tuesday.
His family, who only discovered he had been put to death after reading a news report online, described how Mustafa was arrested six years ago with two of his friends in the streets of Tarout.
They said;
The police released him without charge but confiscated his phone. We later found that there was a photograph on the phone that offended them.
Later they called us and told Mustafa to come and collect his phone, but instead of giving it back they detained him and our suffering began. How can they execute a boy because of a photograph on his phone? Since his arrest we have known nothing but pain. It is a living death for the whole family.
At his subsequent trial the charge sheet made specific reference to a ‘photograph that was offensive to the security services‘.
For the past five years, Saudi Arabia has made repeated pledges not to execute anyone for offences committed when they were children.
There was an outcry when, despite the promises, six young such men formed part of a mass execution that saw 37 people put to death on April 23rd, 2019.
In April 2020, Saudi Human Rights Commission announced a Royal Decree extending Juvenile Law and later insisted that ‘no one in Saudi Arabia will be executed for a crime committed as a minor‘.
In February 2021, Riyadh authorities told the UN Human Rights Council that “anyone who commits a death-eligible crime as a child” will be subject to “a maximum sentence of ten years in a juvenile institution”.
However, following Mustafa’s execution, campaigners fear that other youngsters could also die.
On his part, Reprieve Director, Maya Foa said;
It is not enough for Saudi Arabia’s partners to ‘raise human rights issues’, as British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab reportedly did on his recent visit to the Kingdom.
They need to raise specific cases, and make clear that executions for childhood crimes will not be tolerated. Otherwise Abdullah al-Howaiti, arrested aged 14 and sentenced to death at 17, could be next.
Saudi Arabia is currently one of 53 countries to still have death sentence, employing a variety of methods including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, electrocution and beheading.
According to Saudi Human Rights Commission (SHRC), the state documented 27 executions last year which it said represented an 85% drop compared to 2019.
However, campaign groups have warned that the number might increase again this year, given that the decline could be partly attributed to COVID-19 lockdown.
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