Saudi Arabia: Has the rate of executions doubled?
By
Reality Check team BBC News
Claim: In the past six months, the rate of executions in Saudi Arabia has
doubled.
Reality
Check verdict: Emily Thornberry's office
clarified to BBC Reality Check that she meant the past eight months, not six
months. Saudi Arabia does not release official statistics on the number of
executions it carries out. However, her figures are broadly correct, according
to prominent human rights organisations.
Shadow
foreign secretary Emily Thornberry made the claim in an interview on BBC Radio
4's Today programme on Wednesday, while criticising what she called the UK
government's "red-carpet treatment" of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman's three-day visit to the UK.
BBC Reality Check contacted her
office to ask for her source - her office clarified that she had misspoken and
that she had meant the rate of executions had doubled in the past eight months,
since July 2017. Mohammed bin Salman was made crown
prince in June 2017.
Number
of executions
The Saudi government does not release
official statistics on the number of executions it carries out, but state media
does report frequently on executions. Ms Thornberry's figures come from
Reprieve, a human-rights campaign organisation - its figures come from a
compilation of these state media reports, which are publicly available. BBC
Reality Check has seen the organisation's database of these reports.
Global
comparison
A lack
of transparency around execution figures is not uncommon - most of the data for
international comparisons comes from human rights organisations such as Reprieve and Amnesty International. In 2016, these two
organisations' figures were broadly in agreement. Based on these figures, globally
Saudi Arabia ranks third highest in the world, behind China and Iran.
Both said that China had executed the
most people, although they were unable to provide a figure - the number of
executions is a state secret in China, and the groups say they believe that
those reported in the media "are likely to be a fraction of those that are
carried out".
Similarly, although Amnesty
International puts the number of executions in Iran at more than 567, and
Reprieve has the lower figure of more than 534, Reprieve notes that "the
actual number of executions is likely to be higher... given the government's
under-reporting of executions and the holding of secret executions". In a press release, Reprieve pointed
out that the doubling of executions had coincided with Mohammed bin Salman's
appointment as crown prince, "in marked contrast to the headline-grabbing
reforms that have been introduced in the Kingdom".
Dr
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, from the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice
University, told the BBC that the number of executions had escalated sharply in 2015.
"My reading is that the higher
rate of executions is partly due to a decision by the Saudi authorities to
carry out a large number of death sentences that had been imposed but not acted
upon during the reign of King Abdullah," he said. "It's hard to pinpoint any one
issue over the past eight months which might explain why there has been such a
sudden jump," he added.
A researcher for Human Rights Watch
said that the lack of transparency from the Saudi authorities made it
"hard to find a pattern to it all". Saudi
Arabia's record on human rights has come under scrutiny during the crown
prince's visit, with the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, challenging
Theresa May on it during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. The prime minister said she would be
raising human rights issues with the crown prince.
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