Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed two people, including one accused of trying to blow up an oil facility, bringing the number of executions to six this year, state media reported.
A second man was convicted of committing “indecent acts of sodomy” on minors, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
The executions, both in the western Mecca region, came three days after authorities in the southwestern Baha region executed four people accused of kidnapping and killing another.
This is the highest number of executions this year in the kingdom, which killed 147 people last year – more than double the 2021 figure of 69, according to an AFP tally.
Last year’s tally included 81 people killed for terrorism offenses on a single day in March 2022, an event that sparked international outrage.
Saturday’s execution showed the government’s “reluctance to establish security and achieve justice” and should serve as a warning to other offenders, SPA said, citing the Interior Minister.
The man who tried to attack the oil facility also shot and killed a member of the security forces and shot another person, SPA said, without specifying when the attack took place.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest exporter of crude oil.
The SPA report did not explain how the final execution was carried out, although the wealthy Gulf kingdom is known for beheadings.
More than 1,000 death sentences have been carried out since King Salman took power in 2015, according to a report published earlier this year by Reprieve and the European-Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR).
The rate rose from an average of 70.8 executions a year from 2010 to 2014, to 129.5 a year from 2015, the report said.
Last year saw the return of executions for drug crimes, ending a nearly three-year moratorium.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the son of the king and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, said in an interview with the Atlantic magazine that the kingdom “gets rid of” the death penalty except in cases of murder or when someone “threatens the lives of many people. people”, according to a transcript published by state media in March 2022.