Saudi Arabia plans to execute more than 50 people convicted of terrorism, according to reports, in what appears to be a warning to would-be jihadis at a time of militant attacks on the kingdom.
Fifty-five people were awaiting execution for “terrorist crimes” that killed more than 100 civilians and 71 security personnel, the Okaz newspaper said, without specifying when the executions would occur.
On Monday, al-Riyadh, a semi-official newspaper, reported that 52 people would be put to death soon, but it removed the story from its website without explanation.
Some of those facing execution were affiliated with al-Qaida, Okaz said. Others were from Awamiya, a largely Shia town in the oil-producing Eastern Province, where the government has suppressed demonstrations for equal rights.
Diplomats in Riyadh say their governments have been assured Saudi Arabia will not execute Shia convicted after protests.
Awamiya residents responded to the news by closing roads leading to the city with burning debris, activists said.
The alleged al-Qaida militants were accused of attempts to overthrow the government and carry out attacks using small weapons, explosives and surface-to-air missiles, Okaz said. One prisoner was accused of trying to buy nuclear material in Yemen worth $1.5m for use inside Saudi Arabia.
The charges against the Awamiya residents include sedition, attacks on security officials and interference in neighbouring Bahrain, which has also experienced unrest since 2011.
Saudi Arabia has executed more than 150 people this year, mostly by public beheading, its highest number in 20 years, Amnesty International said.
The Saudi monarchy has in recent years sentenced to death dozens of people convicted of taking part in al-Qaida attacks in the kingdom from 2003-06 and again in 2009.
Islamic State sympathisers have killed dozens in Saudi Arabia over the past 12 months, with a string of mosque bombings and shootings aimed at members of the Shia Muslim minority as well as security officers and western expatriates.
The Syria and Iraq-based militant group has called on its followers in Saudi Arabia to stay home and conduct attacks there instead of travelling to join the caliphate it declared in 2014.
Saudi police have detained hundreds of the group’s suspected sympathisers and have joined an international coalition carrying out airstrikes against it in Syria. Riyadh has also deployed state-affiliated clergy to denounce jihadi ideology.
Saudi courts have also sentenced to death this year seven Shia men convicted of sedition, for taking part in pro-democracy protests and attacks on police during demonstrations over discrimination from 2011-13.
Two of those men were minors at the time of the protests. Sentencing them to death and having their bodies publicly displayed prompted an international outcry.
The last time Saudi Arabia carried out mass executions for security offences was after a group of Islamist militants seized Mecca’s Grand Mosque in 1979.
The only people executed for al-Qaida attacks in the kingdom in the past decade, which killed hundreds, were two men from Chad this year.
