5 years after her husband was executed in Saudi Arabia, Egyptian Noura Fouad remains to be looking for his stays, unable to put his physique to relaxation and pay her respects at his grave.
“My husband had an unfair trial,” the mom of three instructed AFP.
He had been an upstanding man “trapped by traffickers”, she added, “and his felony document in Egypt was clear”.
Saudi Arabia executed Fouad’s partner, Moamer Kadhafi — named for the previous Libyan chief — in 2020 after discovering him responsible of drug trafficking, a capital offence within the Gulf kingdom.
Riyadh put 129 foreigners to dying final yr, together with 85 for drug trafficking, in line with an AFP tally based mostly on official figures — greater than triple the 34 executions recorded in each 2022 and 2023, drawing criticism from rights defenders.
UN particular rapporteurs Morris Tidball-Binz and Alice Jill Edwards lately warned in a press release that Saudi “executions of international nationals look like more and more happening with out prior notification to dying row inmates, their households, or their authorized representatives”.
Such was the case for Fouad, who by no means obtained to say goodbye to her husband.
“We discovered of his execution from his colleagues, then from the media,” she stated, her throat tight.
– ‘Nobody helped me’ –
Kadhafi was a driver who had been transporting greens between Egypt and northern Saudi Arabia when he was arrested in 2017.
Fouad was not in a position to converse to him for a month, and was by no means granted a jail go to as a result of she didn’t have a visa.
“We didn’t have the means to pay for a lawyer,” she stated, including that as a substitute they got a court-appointed defence advocate.
Decrying the trial as unfair, she stated that her husband had “solely hoped to be heard”.
Her expertise aligns with what Human Rights Watch’s Joey Shea has noticed.
“We will’t say throughout the board that each single individual has by no means had entry to a lawyer,” she stated, “however not less than in 99 p.c of the circumstances that we now have documented, they don’t.”
“And within the situations the place they do have entry to attorneys, they’re appointed attorneys who don’t appear to really be engaged on their (purchasers’) behalf.”
Fouad stated she went to the Saudi embassy in Cairo to request her husband’s physique and private results, “however nobody helped me”.
She obtained his dying certificates, passport and can six months later, however not his stays.
“Are we canine to be handled like this?” she requested.
Requested for touch upon the case, the Saudi authorities didn’t reply.
Of their assertion, the UN rapporteurs stated international defendants are “usually in a scenario of vulnerability”, and particular measures have to be granted to safeguard their rights “from the second of arrest… together with entry to consular help”.
Nevertheless, one international diplomat in Saudi Arabia who spoke on situation of anonymity stated “we don’t essentially get the data from the Saudi authorities, and generally we get it very late to behave”.
– ‘We’re nugatory’ –
Together with its personal nationals, Saudi Arabia executed a complete of 338 folks in 2024, up from 170 the yr earlier than. Up to now this yr, it has already executed 56 — 22 of them foreigners.
The rise seems to fly within the face of earlier statements from de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who instructed The Atlantic in 2022 that the dying penalty can be restricted to severe crimes.
Because the finish of a moratorium in 2021, the nation has additionally resumed executions for drug trafficking.
The assertion from the UN rapporteurs stated that as of December 2024, 75 p.c of the folks executed that yr for drug offences had been foreigners, citing the circumstances of Egyptian nationals who had been convicted “in trials that apparently fall wanting the worldwide requirements of equity and due course of”.
However one Arab diplomat who has adopted such circumstances stated he didn’t imagine “there’s systematic discrimination in opposition to foreigners”, including he had additionally seen “Saudis sentenced to dying and foreigners acquitted”.
In the meantime, within the southern Pakistani metropolis of Karachi, Amina was nonetheless ready for the physique of her husband, who was put to dying by Saudi Arabia in 2022.
“My husband was executed after conviction in a homicide case, regardless that he proved that he was not current on the crime scene on the time,” the mom of six instructed AFP.
“However nobody cares concerning the international defendants in Saudi Arabia. Nobody cares about their households. We’re nugatory.
“All we would like for now could be his physique,” she added. “They’ve denied us even that proper.”
