Saudi Arabia Executes 18 People in Two Weeks

In the last two weeks Saudi Arabia has executed 18 people. Four men were put to death Monday for possessing hashish and another man for murder Tuesday, the local media reports.

The high death toll has alarmed human rights groups who said that there had been a "disturbing" rise in the use of the death sentence in Saudi Arabia and the kingdom should not treat human life as so insignificant, according to BBC.

The four men who were executed Monday were members of the same extended family. The official media network named them as Hadi bin Saleh Abdullah al-Mutlaq, Mufreh bin Jaber Zayed al-Yami, Ali bin Jaber Zayed al-Yami and Awadh bin Saleh Abdullah al-Mutlaq. They were convicted for "receiving large quantities of hashish"and were killed in the south-eastern city of Najran.  

The case against them was based on confessions that authorities extracted under torture, Amnesty International reports. Amnesty International is a global movement with more than 3 million supporters in around 150 countries and territories who campaign against the  grave abuses of human rights endured by victims around the world.

"The recent increase in executions in Saudi Arabia is a deeply disturbing deterioration. The authorities must act immediately to halt this cruel practice. The death penalty is always wrong, and it is against international law to use it in cases involving non-lethal crimes and where evidence used to convict the person is based on 'confessions' extracted as a result of torture," said Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme.

Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia's Sharia Islamic legal code authorizes individual judges to announce verdicts and sentences on the basis of their own interpretation of the Muslim law.

This, according to critics, means that similar crimes can be dealt with in different ways; therefore, punishments for very similar criminal acts can vary.

The judges also possess other extensive powers like preventing defendants from gaining access to a lawyer or close the courtrooms to outside scrutiny.

In 2013, Saudi Arabia had executed at least 79 people, three of whom were under 18 years of age at  the time of the crimes for which they were put to death.