Saudi youth who was spared from execution is sentenced to be beheaded a second time
- A Saudi man was sentenced to death for the second time in a ruling on Thursday
- The Saudi youth was charged with robbery and murder when he was 14 years old
- He was first sentenced to beheading in 2019 but his case was overturned
- But Abdullah al-Howaiti has now seen his death sentence renewed after a retrial
- He was tortured into signing a ‘false confession’, said his mother on social media
A Saudi man convicted of armed robbery and murder charges when he was a minor was sentenced to death for the second time after a first ruling was overturned, rights groups said Thursday.
Abdullah al-Howaiti was arrested in 2017 at the age of 14 on charges of armed robbery and killing a police officer in Saudi Arabia’s northern Tabuk province.
He was first sentenced to death in 2019, with five other defendants handed 15-year prison terms for allegedly aiding and abetting.
In November, the supreme court overturned Howaiti’s sentence and called for a retrial.
Abdullah was 14 years old when he was arrested in 2017. He was tortured until he ‘confessed’ to crimes he could not have committed
‘The Criminal Court in Tabuk (north west) sentenced the minor Abdullah al-Huwaiti in retribution,’ his mother Um Abdullah wrote on Twitter after Wednesday’s ruling.
‘After the Supreme Court overturned the first ruling because of false confessions, today it pronounces an unjust conviction just like last time.’
Saudi human rights group ALQST condemned Wednesday’s renewed death sentence, tweeting on Thursday that it followed ‘a grossly unfair trial’.
‘The alleged offence took place when al-Howaiti was only 14, showing the Saudi authorities’ continued application of the death penalty against minors,’ it added.
In April 2020, the kingdom announced it was ending the death penalty for those convicted of crimes committed while they were under 18.
In October 2021, Ali Al-Nimr, a young Shi’ite Muslim whose death sentence for protesting when he was 17 had been commuted to 10 years in prison under the legislative reforms, was released from prison.
But the kingdom’s state-backed Human Rights Commission later clarified that the ban on the death penalty only applied to a lesser category of offences under Islamic law known as ‘ta’zeer.’
Wednesday’s ruling against Huwaiti was in the category of ‘qisas’, or retribution, usually for murder, which under Islamic law allows families of victims to demand the death sentence, compensation or to offer a pardon.
‘Abdullah al-Howaiti has now been sentenced to death not once, but twice, by a court that knows he was fourteen years old when he was arrested and tortured,’ Maya Foa, director of anti-death penalty charity Reprieve, said in a statement.
‘How can this be when Saudi Arabia has claimed, so often and so vociferously, to have eliminated the death penalty for children?’
Huwaiti had been arrested along with five others and Human Rights Watch and Reprieve have said all six defendants told court sessions that interrogators had coerced their confessions through torture or the threat of it.
He has several alibis – he was at the seafront playing football with his friends at the time of the alleged ‘crime’. Abdullah is facing execution by beheading
Saudi authorities have previously denied similar allegations about the use of torture.
‘This makes a mockery of Saudi Arabia’s claim to have eliminated the death penalty for children,’ Britain-based campaign group Reprieve tweeted.
‘Abdullah had an alibi and, as confirmed by court documents, CCTV footage showed he was 200km away from the scene of the crime,’ it said.
‘He was tortured into signing a false “confession”.’
The wealthy Gulf country has one of the world’s highest execution rates.
A total of nearly 70 people have been executed this year in the kingdom, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.
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