Saudi Arabia has executed at least 175 people over the past 12 months, an average of one person every two days, according to an Amnesty International report.
The 43-page report titled “Killing In the Name of Justice: The Death Penalty in Saudi Arabia”
said that between January 1985 and June 2015, at least 2,208 people were executed in the kingdom.
An Associated Press tally based on official announcements shows that Saudi Arabia has executed 109 people since January, compared to 83 in all of 2014.
The kingdom follows a strict interpretation of Islamic law and applies the death penalty to a number of crimes including murder, rape and drug smuggling. Even minors can face execution.
“Saudi Arabia’s faulty justice system facilitates judicial executions on a mass scale,” said the acting director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program.
Amnesty also said that confessions that led to the death sentence were extracted through prolonged torture.
Most executions in Saudi Arabia are carried out by beheading, though some are also done by firing squad. In rare cases, executed bodies have been displayed in public to deter others from committing crime.
Almost half of those executed in the last 30 years were foreign nationals, many of whom could not understand court proceedings and charges because they did not speak the language.
Almost a third of those executed were for drug-related offences, according to Amnesty.
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