It was followed by Saudi Arabia with 196 executions last year. “Saudi Arabia executed a staggering 81 people in a single day,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general and a former United Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. In addition to the high figures in Iran and Saudi Arabia, Egypt executed 24 people and 18 were put to death in the U.S. Others are heading in the same direction, with Liberia and Ghana among those taking steps towards abolishing the death penalty. However, Amnesty also said the number of people executed for drug-related offences had more than doubled in 2022, with offenders killed in China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Singapore.

Source: The North Africa Journal May 16, 2023 15:10 UTC